tidbits from nowhere

A healthy obsession... or maybe OCD?

2012-02-05T00:46:00.001+05:30

I have what somemight call a bit of an obsession. :)

I like to takeinformed decisions, but the process of ‘informing’ myself can sometimes belong. And I mean *long*, by most people’s standards.

The latest one concerned drinking water, and one would think that that alone should have been reason enough for aquick decision, but that would be underestimating my ability to procrastinate.

Anyway, to beginat the beginning: I moved into my current house at Yari Road about 6 months back.It’s a nice enough house, though the building is very old and not very wellmaintained, but that’s another story. Even when I had first moved in, thebroker had informed me about the water situation- that the water in the tap isa mix of BMC (ie municipal supply) and borewell water, and therefore, I shouldprocure drinking water from the couple of taps in H block that have continuousBMC water supply. For the first week, while I was still settling down, I got a20l bottle of Bisleri while I tried to figure out what to do about drinkingwater. For those of you who are not from the country, let me tell you that thewater that is supplied by our municipal corporations, though treated, is oftennot fit for drinking. There are all kinds of impurities and contamination to befound in the water, and while many of us seem to have developed a healthyimmunity thanks to having grown up here, sometimes even we succumb to waterborne diseases. And that is why there is a wide variety of water purifiersavailable in the market, all of which do brisk business.

Having said that,BMC water is actually not bad in most places. There is a friend of mine whoscoffs at me and drinks water straight off the tap, but then he has theconstitution of an ox. I have in fact had water at his place many times andsurvived it, but that simply wasn’t an option I was willing to consider as apermanent solution. Besides, much as I would love to trust our governmentagencies, it’s just not practical. So as I sipped on Bisleri that first week, Ihappened to visit a friend who lives in the same building. I was surprised tolearn that she had no idea that the water in the tap wasn’t entirely BMC andhad happily been using it, albeit with a storage water filter. I corrected her,and told her how all the residents, or most of them anyway, get their drinkingwater from H block in cans. That’s what all the big white cans lined up on theground floor are for; they pay the guard a monthly fee to fill them up andleave them at their doorstep everyday. But she couldn’t be bothered, shedeclared, and neither could I, I decided.

And how about thepurification? Well, as far as eliminating microorganisms is concerned, thesurest, most effective way is boiling water and that’s what I decided to do,in lieu of getting a filter. Sure it’s tedious, and sometimes one plainforgets; the worst is when you plain forget after you’ve put the vessel on theburner, and an half hour later you smell something burning- you run into thekitchen to find a red hot steel vessel, disfigured for life! But you get usedto it all after a while.

So what happenednow, six months later? Well, lately I’ve noticed a layer of oil in the boiledwater. Also there is a residue of salt in my plants, left behind by theevaporated water I assume. Both these trouble me needless to say, and when mymaid mentioned to me (not for the first time,) that I should reconsiderwhere I’m getting my drinking water from, and worse- that she never drinks water at myplace because I use tap water, that really was the last straw!

I got myselfanother big bottle of Bisleri and got down to the task of researching to figureout a solution. Here are the findings of two days of off-and-on and half a dayof concentrated researching and reading:

The kind ofpurifier you use depends on the quality of water in your area (but of course.)

In my case, sincepart of the water was ground water, it was likely to contain oil, solidcontaminants, and dissolved salts. All of these are hard to remove, and only bya process called reverse osmosis. RO filters are some of the most expensive inthe market and are not efficient- they waste 2 to 3 times as much water asthey purify. These factors effectively ruled out a wall mounted water purifierconnected to the tap.

This left theother solution- getting water from downstairs in a water can. I am not verycomfortable with the idea of a plastic water can to get and store water,however temporarily. This is not to say that I have managed to eliminateplastic from my life- not by a long shot, but I am trying!

Even if one getsBMC water, there is the matter of purifying it, although this task is mucheasier since this water does not contain oils and dissolved salts and isalready treated with both UV radiation and chlorine.

Therefore, even asimple storage type water filter should suffice (which typically usesactivated carbon though companies nowadays have patended technologies, usingtwo or more steps) though even in this case, boiling is best.

I have readreports of doctors saying that one should boil water even after filtering/purifying using a purifier! By the way, the right way to purify water byboiling is to bring it to a rolling boil and let it boil for about a minute ifyou reside near sea level, and for 3 minutes at higher altitudes. It doesn’teven need to boil really, it just needs to attain a temperature of 72deg forabout 5 minutes, but since this is harder to achieve practically, bringing toboil and letting it boil for 1 minute is recommended (although is there was away around it, it would lead to substantial saving in fuel consumption.) Storageof this water needs some care so as to not contaminate it post boiling.

And while severaltop companies such as Eureka Forbes (the market leader in water purifiers),Tata and HUL, all have very affordable storage water filters in the market, doa basic search for reviews and you would realise almost none are hassle free,though HUL clearly scores better than the others. (I won’t get into thetechnologies they use, for while I am vaguely aware of them, I am none thewiser as to which is better.)

But, there is anenvironmental cost to boiling water- it uses LPG which is not a renewableresource.

So there it isthen- that is my dilemma. Most people would just go for a filter I suppose andit is probably the wiser choice. It saves one the hassle of having to boilwater and does a reasonably good job of purifying water of BMC quality. A filterlike HUL’s Pure-it actually uses a two stage process where it eliminates solidarticles by passing the water through thin semi pervious membranes, andchlorinates.

Heck, mostpeople would have done that without the research and the wasteof a couple of days! :)

I’ll just drawsolace in thinking of myself as a little better informed- for whatever it’sworth.

Wislawa Szymborska

2012-02-04T20:17:00.000+05:30

First a quickpost to honour this wonderful poet I just discovered.

You see, I wasnever into poetry; or literature for that matter. I used to read voraciously asa child, but had no one to guide me in new directions so it was all fairlyusual and popular stuff. All the authors I read were ones I discovered myselfor those that close friends were reading. In hindsight, I feel that I missedout on a great many. This is not to say that my teachers didn’t try. I remembergetting books as prizes year after year. When I look back now at the books thatI was gifted, I can see perhaps a conscious effort on the parts of my teachersto acknowledge my reading preferences, and introduce me to new books, usuallyclassics. I still have copies of ‘Twenty thousand leagues under the Sea’, whichI never took to, and ‘Silas Marner’, that I read and enjoyed and many such,which were prizes for various academic achievements.

I never took tothe classics, somehow. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens bored me, mostly(blasphemy, yes!) though I did fall in love with ‘A tale of two cities’, whichwas such a welcome change from the morose ‘David Copperfield’ or ‘OliverTwist’; as for Shakespeare, all I can say in my defense is that I find playshard to read. There was also the fact that I never read the originals becausethe language was just so tedious and hard to understand, and I suppose one doeslose something of their beauty in translations, especially in translations forchildren. I hope to go back to such classical authors someday, and discoverthem anew.

My reading habitsgrew worse as I grew older, and speed declined, and how! I nearly gave upreading because it took so long that it almost seemed like a chore. This was along and sad phase that is not yet over, though I am trying to get back to reading.

Which is not tosay that I don’t spend long hours in front of my computer screen, reading allkinds of stuff- newspaper articles and blog posts mostly, but still. It’s justthat I don’t have the attention span for long pieces, which of course books are.Which is why it surprises me somewhat that I didn’t take to poetry earlier,which does come in lovely short capsules, mostly.

Of course, Istill can’t claim to like too much of classical poetry. I admire it for itstechnique and mastery, no doubt. I just don’t take to stuff that is too lateralin meaning, or makes me reach for a dictionary (or rather, opendictionary.com.)

There areadvantages of course, to not having known of countless authors and poets- andthat is the joy of discovering them. There is a thrill that I get from readinga good book or story or poem that is indescribable. Sometimes it makes meshiver with excitement; sometimes it makes me sigh with wonder at the sheerbeauty of the words, expressed with such simplicity. Sometimes there is an urgeto share the words, and they end up as facebook status messages and mails tofriends. The last such book that I read was Milan Kundera’s ‘Life isElsewhere’. And this post is to share a couple of poems of Wislawa Szymborska,a name that I can barely pronounce and a woman that I didn’t know existed untilshe passed away recently, leading to her being quoted by several of my friends,as a tribute. One line caught my attention and I’m glad it did, for it belongedto a beautiful piece. And the search led to several other beautiful pieces,from which I reproduce two here:

Under One SmallStar

My apologies tochance for calling it necessity.

My apologies tonecessity if I'm mistaken, after all.

Please, don't beangry, happiness, that I take you as my due.

May my dead bepatient with the way my memories fade.

My apologies totime for all the world I overlook each second.

My apologies topast loves for thinking that the latest is the first.

Forgive me,distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, openwounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize formy record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.

I apologize tothose who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.

Pardon me,hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.

Pardon me,deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

And you, falcon,unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,

your gaze alwaysfixed on the same point in space,

forgive me, evenif it turns out you were stuffed.

My apologies tothe felled tree for the table's four legs.

My apologies togreat questions for small answers.

Truth, pleasedon't pay me much attention.

Dignity, pleasebe magnanimous.

Bear with me, Omystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.

Soul, don't takeoffense that I've only got you now and then.

My apologies toeverything that I can't be everywhere at once.

My apologies toeveryone that I can't be each woman and each man.

I know I won't bejustified as long as I live,

since I myself standin my own way.

Don't bear me illwill, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

then laborheavily so that they may seem light.

This one struck achord! Yes, my apologies, many, many apologies, for all that I want to be, tryto be, but fail more than I succeed;

apologies to allthe people that I love, in the many ways that I love them, which sometimes goesunexpressed, or not expressed enough or is sometimes just not sufficient- forthem or for me;

apologies to allthe less fortunate, for it’s nothing but my good fortune that I have food toeat and a roof over my head, it could very easily have been otherwise;apologies for all the times that I have expensive dinners or wear expensiveclothes, it’s not the divide I wish to highlight, sometimes I just indulge inmy taste for good food and beauty;

apologies to allthe persecuted, you don’t deserve it any more than I do; apologies for laughingand making merry while you have your house burned down, or run for life, or aretortured in prison, I do stand by you;

apologies to allof you fighting distant wars, or living in war like conditions, sometimes innot so distant places; apologies for the normalcy I enjoy- simple freedoms liketravelling without having to carry identification papers and roaming thestreets after dark.

And suchapologies to many others that I may not yet remember, but who sometimes, justsometimes, introduce a tinge of guilt in my everyday living.

The other one isa wonderfully simple poem that ends with such hope and beauty, even as it driveshome a feeling of injustice perhaps, but also inevitability. So much, in suchfew words!

The End and theBeginning

After every war

someone has toclean up.

Things won’t

straightenthemselves up, after all.

Someone has topush the rubble

to the side ofthe road,

so thecorpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has toget mired

in scum andashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has todrag in a girder

to prop up awall.

Someone has toglaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it’snot,

and takes years.

All the camerashave left

for another war.

We’ll need thebridges back,

and new railwaystations.

Sleeves will goragged

from rolling themup.

Someone, broom inhand,

still recalls theway it was.

Someone elselistens

and nods withunsevered head.

But already thereare those nearby

starting to millabout

who will find itdull.

From out of thebushes

sometimes someonestill unearths

rusted-outarguments

and carries themto the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going onhere

must make way for

those who knowlittle.

And less thanlittle.

And finally aslittle as nothing.

In the grass thathas overgrown

causes andeffects,

someone must bestretched out

blade of grass inhis mouth

gazing at theclouds.

Food. For thought? No, just food!

2012-01-06T18:07:00.005+05:30

Isn’t it nice when a belief you intuitively hold, sometimes not even aware that you hold it, for it’s a hazy unformed thought at the back of your mind, the need for having articulated it never having arisen earlier, turns out to be one that others hold as well? There is a feeling of acknowledgement and validation, not that it is needed, but which is nice to have anyway. That is one of the most distinct memories of my first Vipassana shivir.
My favourite part of the day in the shivir used to be the discourse in the evening. (And it took only a couple of days, and listening to the discourse one day in English and one day in Hindi, to realise that he was much better and at his humorous best in Hindi.) It was a pleasure to hear that discourse, to hear him explain in simple language using everyday examples, such concepts as love and compassion towards every one and tolerance towards other religions. I often found myself nodding in agreement, and a sense of excitement rose up in me as I realized that what I was listening to were concepts that I had intuitively believed, but had never strung together in words. It’s a wonderful feeling. It gave me goose pimples sometimes, at other times it made me teary eyed, and filled me with gratitude for everything in my life, all the joy and pain, all the people I loved and who loved me, and all the people who didn’t, and everything else that had come together over the years, towards this moment in time, which was as beautiful as it could be.
Does that sound tacky? Maybe it does, but that is how it was.

And it happened again recently, as I chatted with Neel, a dear friend from college days. Neel and Supriti are two beautiful people, and fantastic designers of buildings, furniture, lamps, and almost anything else that takes their fancy, who live and practise in beautiful Pondicherry as the design ensemble, ‘Ovoid’. They are also dear friends, who I happened to have the good fortune to visit in the later half of November. In one of our innumerable conversations, Neel mentioned to me why they make it a point to cook themselves, no matter how busy they are. He said food is best, and most nutritious when it is cooked with love.
It made me smile, for I couldn’t agree more. It is perhaps this secret ingredient- love that makes a mother’s cooking special. Have you ever noticed how you can tire of the best food, from the best restaurants, or the best cooks, but you never tire of your mother’s cooking no matter how many times you have it, over however many years. Have you also noticed the pet peeve of many a young bride that no matter how hard she tries, she can never quite match up to the standard of her mother-in-law’s cooking? :) In India of course it is taken to something of an extreme, for a mother’s love is often best expressed by food and the act of feeding. Indian families, many of them, tend to be rather undemonstrative in their show of affection, and uncommunicative too, to the extent that many topics are taboo, no matter how important they may be. But food remains the one way in which a mother continues to express her love, however old her child may grow.
But I digress, the point is: food cooked with love has a special wholesomeness, and a transfer of a kind of energy and good vibes happens, for lack of a better term, when you eat food that is cooked with love. There can be no substitute for this magic ingredient.

And it was perhaps this belief, as yet unarticulated, that made me cook all these years in Mumbai, coupled with the fact that it’s very hard to find a cook whose cooking you can endure for any length of time!And so it was also that I was thrilled when my maid walked in today with a dabba full of yummy veggies, sent over by someone who I once worked with as part of a film crew, but who I otherwise barely know. And it made me smile to read these words, as I providentially enough, stumbled upon this blog.

Ruminations

2011-12-09T19:38:00.001+05:30

There was a time, when I was in school and the Ramayana and Mahabharat formed part of course material. Thus it was that I knew even the complex Mahabharat with its many characters fairly well and could predict which episode would come next in the tackily produced Mahabharat that was aired on Doordarshan then. I took great pride in it too. It never occurred to me as unusual that a religious text was part of school course material. Many years later, and for many years now I have felt miserable about my dismal knowledge of other texts and cultures that form part of my country. I am quick to proclaim myself a secularist, but I’m never sure I even understand what that truly means. I now have friends from different faiths, and several of them have cross married. I’m always delighted when I see them celebrating each others’ festivals and explaining to the children their respective significance. So it is that Tanvi is as excited about making rangolis on Diwali as she is about picking out the perfect Christmas tree. And so it is that I almost faced a language barrier when I first met Sanaa, for I started to chat with her in Hindi while she blabbered away in Bengali and Malyalam with equal ease.

I’m equally distressed when I see youngsters so enamoured by foreign cultures, their concept of Diwali is more about playing cards and bursting noisy crackers than about the victory of good over evil. And of course I’m distressed by my own lack of understanding about my religion which is being misrepresented by the fundamentalist Hindu right on the one hand and simplistic and distorted depictions in films and television on the other.

Culture-al Woes

2011-12-09T19:27:00.004+05:30

Sometime back I happened to be at a memorial concert for a lady I didn’t know and had never met. She must have been a good soul though for there was a hall full of people who had come to attend, and they were in for a treat of beautiful Sufi verses of Kabir, Rumi and others sung so soulfully that I was nearly moved to tears.

As I sat listening I wondered about the people on stage- those people with a talent that takes years of practice to hone and master. I wondered how old they were, how much time they would already have spent and how much more they would continue to spend on understanding music better so their performances could get even more soulful.

And I wondered how much money they made.

I am aware of how pessimistic I sound, but I do despair at this state of affairs where art and culture gets such a raw deal. How many more bankers and MBAs and software engineers will we churn out before we realise what a monochromatic society we’re creating? All the emphasis in our education system, in society even, is on securing the future by working towards a well paying job. ‘Competition’, ‘professional’, ‘job oriented’ are the keywords in a universe that is far removed both from culture or uncomfortable realities of any kind. The only ‘culture’ that a vast majority of our young population has access to is the one they see depicted on television in regressive serials- and that couldn’t be more distorted!

This is particularly sad because we have an incredibly rich culture- thousands of languages and dialects, songs, dances, literature and folk tales, architecture, sculpture, art, story telling and puppetry traditions, and more that can’t be categorised but contributes to making this subcontinent beautiful and diverse. How much of it do we really see around us anymore? Much of it has been reduced to being practiced by select families, and the younger generations even in those are not really interested in carrying on. They would much rather be ‘educated’ and find jobs that offer instant money than devote their entire lives to a craft that few are willing to patronise. A few years back, I shot for an organization called Kala Raksha based in Bhuj. It was left to an American woman who fell in love with Indian textiles, to study and write a book and subsequently start an NGO and set up a museum and a school to preserve dying local textile crafts of the area. She had little money to make the film, but we went ahead and shot anyway because she wanted to capture some of their genius on camera before the masters passed away, old as they all were.

Much of our adivasi traditions are endangered by the ‘civilised’ world’s attempts to take them into their fold. Instead of creating tolerant diverse societies, where individual cultures can flourish, the attempt seems to be to homogenise. Always has been, I suppose. What else are all the drives to convert people to specific religions? What are the attempts at ‘educating’ the masses in a Western style?

I’m not sure I know how we can stem this decline. State patronage comes to mind. I wish we lived in a world where people who have the money also had the conscience to do the right things. Then perhaps corporations (some of which are now so powerful, their turnovers are more than those of many countries) would also encourage art. But I’m old and cynical. I don’t believe anymore that corporations that run on the primary motive of profit, would ever do anything without some returns in mind. And if state support is the only answer, then given the state of our governments and their policies, I’m guessing its not too bright a future for many many artistic traditions.

It’s a strange bird

2011-12-06T21:38:00.005+05:30

It’s a strange bird: love.

Almost every text ever written has touched upon some aspect of it, we’ve read about it, seen films, heard songs. Even after all that we know or ought to know after all that exposure, we’re still falter through life making mistakes and yearning for it. Almost everyone who ever lived has (probably) struggled with love. How is it that the one thing that we should know about, is the one thing that eludes us? How is one feeling capable of so many manifestations? It is but one ras out of nine. How then does it dominate the creation of all kinds of art?

Even speaking from personal experience, I can say that I have known several times, several kinds. I have always been grateful for it, or at least tried to be. Sometimes it has sneaked up on me when I least expected it, or from quarters that I least expected from, sometimes it slipped away from where I desperately wanted it to stay. Sometimes it’s stayed well beyond I had imagined or anticipated. And sometimes it has come back like a boomerang, long after I thought it had died a natural death. Sometimes it has changed shape, devoid of a reason to stay as it originally was, or to wither away. Sometimes it evaporated altogether, without a trace, leaving only a doubt and wonderment about the reason for its existence in the first place. I refer here mostly to romantic love of course, though I, like each one of us, has known very many different kinds. And yes, it varied wildly in intensity, much of it was unrequited and hence untested, but that isn’t really the point.

I continue to be enamoured by it.

Not so much by its presence or absence in my life but by the elusive idea that it is. An idea that captivates all yet remains just out of reach of many, or with the very real possibility of slipping away anytime, for others.

It’s hard to articulate, but I feel a sense of mystery and wonderment and yet a submission, for there’s no other way really to respond- like you would while contemplating say the universe. Can we really contemplate the universe- its origins, its size. It’s always been there, and it’s always amazed man by its mysteries and continues to. So I feel has been the case with this one emotion that can fill us with joy and wring at our hearts with a brutal, physical pain. In another manifestation it’s the one emotion that can cause wars and inspire peace, in equal measure.

From where I am currently, I feel a strange detachment with life and with the world. It’s like floating over yourself, and seeing things for what they really are, stripped of the trappings of attachments that tend to skew our perspective. From here nothing is indispensable and everything is precious. Love is beautiful as it should be, but it isn’t selfish or compartmentalised. It is ever expanding, and it makes you see people that you never thought you could like with compassion. From where I am, love comes easy. I see beautiful pictures and I love the photographer, I read a beautiful piece of writing and I love the writer. I see a good film and I love the filmmaker, I see a good design and I love the designer. I may not have met them, but I feel a love anyway.

But I digress.

Even with regard to romantic love, there has been so much learning. Couples that I absolutely adored, broke up. Couples that I thought were doomed, survived. People married for reasons inexplicable for me, and they are happy. I have friends who found love early and have spent over a decade together. I have friends who struggled, unable to work out even long standing relationships, then marrying in a jiffy. And I know several people including myself, who have in their past, that one relationship that has become the defining one of their lives. Which is not to say that they continue to pine after what could have been, or draw comparisons or parallels, just that they are shaped more by that one experience than any others.

For me personally, getting over and ahead of that one was a liberating experience. Having touched the heights of happiness and the depths of sorrow with it, everything else since has been easy. I wonder, in fact I worry sometimes if this detachment is really a maturity aided by the new perspective accorded by Vipassana (which has had a small but significant role in my life) or if I have built an impregnable wall around me to shield myself from further hurt. It’s schizophrenic almost, to oscillate between those two states- of supreme peace and self-assuredness and of a deep, unforgiving confusion.

I’m not sure any of this makes any sense. This was an idea forming in my head for much of yesterday, and even as I sat down to write I realized it had already slipped away. All it left behind were these scattered thoughts.

Ageing

2011-10-06T19:42:00.000+05:30

On my way to work today

I ran my fingers through myhair

came away with a strand,

the grey at the root

working its way to the tip.

More than halfway through,

just like life.

When we met again

2011-09-18T21:12:00.000+05:30

Many years I spentwondering
what could have been
How things might have been different
if we had spoken up
Would they have been different?

How we may have been different people
had we not been racked by an unnecessary guilt
Would we have been different?

How we may have met
had we met without context.

Many years later, the storm has passed
leaving behind an engulfing peace,
a quiet acceptance
and faith in the belief
that if this is how the Universe intended it to be
this is how it best is.

And so it was amusing to see
that meeting after years
you were more nervous than me.

13 days vs 10 years…

2011-09-18T20:51:00.002+05:30

Sometime back, in a fit of understandable rage, a friend of mine wrote this on facebook:

-------------
3 SIMPLE REASONS why IRON WOMAN IROM SHARMILA's case probably doesn't get the attention an ANNA gets-

1. A WOMAN is heading this agitation.
2. She is from the 'CHINKI' NORTH-EAST, which is not really India, is it? Only Delhi and Bombay and the other two metros are India, no?
3. She is fighting for a SPECIFIC, REGION-BASED, 'NARROW' issue - the repeal of the AFSPA. She is not fighting a 'GENERAL EVIL' like ‘CORRUPTION' so why should we give two hoots, right?
Honestly, I don't care as much about this vague piece of shit called 'CORRUPTION'. I myself am bothered, disturbed & repulsed most by environmental & cultural corruption/pollution (But who gives a damn as long as pockets are filling up, right?)
But I think I should care even more for a human being's life, no?
Shame on the Government/s for letting someone go hungry for MORE THAN TEN YEARS and conveniently ignoring her. Ten years and counting. This is one world record India should be ashamed about.

Can we please make this the next viral internet 'REVOLUTION'?
Can we please not let someone die for doing the right thing?
CAN WE MAKE IROM EAT PLEASE?!

This will be the real test. Do we care as much about insignificant human life as we do about all-important money?
SPREAD THE WORD.
---------------

And this was my response:

------------
Ok, I didn’t want to be drawn into discussions about Anna Hazare and especially not the inevitable comparisons with Gandhi and Irom Sharmila. But since it’s you, I will write out my few bits, not in any particular order.

While its natural to remember Irom Sharmila at a time like this, it’s not fair, neither to Irom Sharmila nor to Hazare. It’s two different causes and two different movements, independent of each other. One doesn’t become more important or legitimate than the other because of it numbers… and well, what can I say about the other… The thing is, I’m uncomfortable about the tendency to compare things- causes, people. Why should they be justified on the basis of how they stand up to each other? Why should anyone have to choose between corruption and AFSPA as being the bigger evil? Isn’t it enough that they’re both evil? And it seems almost an insult to Irom Sharmila for Hazare to write to her asking for support. They claim to be non political. Isn’t it a kind of politics though- you support my movement and I’ll support yours. Huh?
Having said that, it’s alright really by me- to each his own. The man in Manipur is a lot more troubled by the AFSPA than corruption, and the man in UP obviously cares two hoots about it because he’s weighed down by his own problems and has no inkling of what the Army’s been upto in Manipur or in Kashmir anyway. There is even less of a case for a movement automatically gaining legitimacy on the basis of numbers. By that logic, the Hindutva movement would be much larger than the anti corruption movement!
So I’m uncomfortable from the start when I read ’13 days vs 10 years…’
Moving on, the first reason you enlist is that the agitation is headed by a woman. I have to confess, that thought never occurred to me. Nor do I think that’s a real enough reason. There is much female discrimination that goes on in this country, and incredibly there is an equal amount of female veneration. Once you reach a certain stage though, I don’t think it matters, even in this country, which gender you belong to. Or so I’d like to think.
The other two causes you enlist are in my opinion, the real reasons. Who cares about what happens in the politically insignificant NE? Then again, whose attention is it that you seek? The government’s? It’s perfectly aware of wrongdoings in Manipur and elsewhere. For the government it’s really a matter of political significance which ultimately translates to numbers. If the Hazare agitation hadn’t managed the numbers that it did, it would have met the same fate, right? The sad, sad reality today is that it needs not moral justification but numbers for the government to come out of its slumber. And here too, corruption has a role to play. There are reasons why some places are kept constantly unstable. It’s called the business of war, and there are gains to be made from it. It’s a kind of corruption at the end of the day.
It’s really how you define it, this corruption. Just because it has been simplified and made palatable for the common man does not mean that it should be regarded as such. And by saying this, I do not in any way mean to belittle the ‘common man’. I just mean to be realistic. The common man has enough problems of his own. Who are you expecting will understand and support a cause, any cause, unless it touches them directly? The farmer contemplating suicide in Vidharbha, or the tribal watching helplessly as his land is taken away for the next development project, or the mother in Kashmir whose son disappears or the Dalit in UP whose wife is raped or the slumdweller in Mumbai whose shanty gets flooded every monsoon? Which ‘common man’ in this country has the time for Irom Sharmila? Who has even heard of her, or of AFSPA? But corruption… everyone’s suffered at the hands of corruption. So of course it’s something that they can immediately relate to.
But I digress. Don’t underestimate corruption. It’s not merely a matter of money. For those that don’t get the employment that they are entitled to under the MNREGA, or don’t get full wages even after working, it is a matter of livelihood, for those who don’t get the ration that they are entitled to under PDS, or who have to pay for their BPL cards, it’s a matter of survival. Understand corruption for what it truly is and the extent of the harm that it’s doing. Corruption may well be claiming more lives in this country than we realise.

That still doesn’t make Irom Sharmila’s cause less worth fighting for.But again, let me clarify. Is fasting as a symbol of protest something that I agree with? No! However right the cause maybe, fasting cannot/ should not be the means to achieve an end. Fasting is violence of a kind, even if it is to your own self. And it is coercive, it leaves little room for dialogue, or at least it places a time limit on it. That by itself should be enough reason to be opposed to fasting. But the way governments react to it these days, by forceful feeding which is violence of another kind, makes it, to my mind, even less desirable or effective a tool of protest. What use is a person whose organs fail, or whose mind no longer functions to an optimum because it has had no nutrition for however many days/ weeks/ months/ years, to a movement? Well, very useful apparently, if you can gain mileage out of it, as Team Anna managed to do, and Irom Sharmila and Swami Nigamananda, and all those teachers who were sitting on a fast sometime back in Mumbai for a cause that I’ve forgotten, did not. (For all you know there are many others in all parts of the country sitting on similar ‘fasts’ right this minute. As an aside, are you going to support them all?) No wonder then that a simple minded man like Anna is the one fasting, while the movement is being organized, strategised and co led by a group. Of course I understand that it is not easy to go on a fast, and not everyone can do it, and the people who can, have a deep belief in their cause and nerves of steel, and ought to respected for it. Having said that, its still not a form of protest that is, to my mind, ethically right.
Besides, a fast by itself does not guarantee results, though it does demonstrate the hopelessness of the person who undertakes it.
I’m all for Irom Sharmila and what she’s fighting for, because she, like any other citizen of the country deserves to be heard, because it is her right, and not because she has been sitting on a fast.
So if you’re suggesting that I should care for her because ‘I should care even more for a human being's life’, then well, I care for her life anyway. And I care for her cause because I believe she is right, but more than anything else she has the right to protest. I disagree with her means, but that’s a personal opinion.
I suppose what I am trying to tell you is, of course I’m with you, but for different reasons.
Can we please make this the next viral internet 'REVOLUTION'?
Can we please not let someone die for doing the right thing?
CAN WE MAKE IROM EAT PLEASE?!
Of course we should.
-------------

I'm so old fashioned!

2011-08-28T23:10:00.002+05:30

And then there was this other piece today about ‘virtual parenting’. So working parents these days are resorting to CCTVs to keep track of what their children are upto? I don’t mean to sound critical or judgmental, I perfectly understand being busy and yet wanting to keep an eye on your child, but CCTVs? Really? Have these parents stopped to consider what effect this constant surveillance may have on the children? It’s the sort of thing you do to keep thieves out of the premises, not children out of mischief. Have they thought of the skewed idea of freedom that their children may grow up with. And of trust? Do they understand that they may be bringing up children who might never quite learn to be themselves because they are always being watched? Or who behave themselves only because they are being watched? The natural corollary to which would be the temptation to misuse freedom, that is bound to arise when they actually have the opportunity for it?
Whatever happened to the ‘sanskar’ that you are meant to pass on your children- a sense of discipline, that comes from within and doesn’t have its roots in a fear of being found out. I have always been opposed to the idea of inculcating values in children through a fear of punishment as opposed to the genuine desire to be good. As a result, I feel we end up raising kids who lack the ability to think for themselves. There is so much emphasis on absolutes- on the right ‘things’ to do, and not enough on building a moral compass so they can intuitively tell right from wrong.
It’s difficult I understand, bringing up children well, especially in today’s day and age where distractions and temptations abound. But to add to that such a dubious measure, with such long-term repercussions, is rather unfair to our future generations.

When we don't ask the right questions...

2011-08-28T23:01:00.004+05:30

So this article in HT the other day, ‘Upset’ house help hurls 1-year-old from terrace', really bothered me. Check out the way it begins, ‘Byculla-based builder, Akhil Khakre, 47, brought home a girl to save her from a life on the streets. But he didn’t know that the girl would repay his kindness by trying to kill his one-year-old son.’ It goes on to say that the girl, all of 13, allegedly flung Khakre’s son from the terrace flat of a four story building because she was upset at being scolded for having broken a plate while washing utensils, an incident that had happened three days before.
So here it is then- a 13 year old picked up from the street and brought home, to be ‘educated’ and ‘assisting in domestic chores.’ While the incident is alarming in itself- people can just pick children up off the streets these days? Oh wait, who am I kidding, it happens all the time, doesn’t it?- what was equally shocking for me was the reportage. This stupid correspondent actually begins by attempting to paint a favourable picture of Khakre?!
The incident is distressing, I understand. And my heart does go out to the family, but that does not absolve Khakre in any way of having employed child labour. My heart goes out equally to the little girl, who may well have been abused, physically and mentally, for her to have taken such an extreme step. HT followed it up with another story that said ‘Byculla maid didn’t realise she would hurt the child: Cops.’ Huh? Which 13 year old does not understand that you can hurt a baby by throwing him around, let alone from the fourth floor?
This is seriously faulty reporting for all the questions that it fails to ask.

Random rainy morning conversation

2011-08-28T19:47:00.006+05:30

The day began with a conversation with my two maids, both of who happened to land up at more or less the same time today. They’re friends and neighbours often looking out for each other- in fact I found one through the other. The conversation initiator was the rain. It has been raining incessantly for the last few days. Its like the monsoon decided to make a comeback with a vengeance. Not that I’m complaining. This city needs all the water it can get and more. As do the farmers tending to their fields, I suppose. Anyway, there was a fresh bout of furious rain in the morning right about the time that they turned up. Anita, the cook looked out of the window and commented on it. On how hard and relentlessly its been raining, and how the building compound, especially at the back, is waterlogged. I nodded absent-mindedly. My window opens out to the back of building compound, and the view is thankfully mostly green (and beautiful), and if you look down from the balcony or the window, you can see the empty brown patch that some residents use for parking. I’ve been noting the build up of the water in this small brown patch. It often turns into a tiny pond, as it did this morning, until the earth soaks up the water.
But I digress. All the romance of the rain went straight of the window when I heard what she said next. She mentioned how the water had come into their house and upto the ankles, wetting everything. Couldn’t sleep the whole night, she said, because everything is wet, you know, even the mattress, all the while smiling ear to ear. It never fails to amaze me. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard something like this of course, but it just seems so incredible that people can live like that and talk about it so nonchalantly, even happily. She spoke of the water seeping in from the ground. (All this ‘reclaimed’ land in Mumbai! I live on it, and I’m not blind to its repercussions. The city is bursting at the seams, and anyone with half a mind can see it. But the builder-politician nexus will not allow any corrective measures. So land will continue to get reclaimed, buildings will continue to come up, slums too for the people in the high rises need their maids and their guards and their delivery boys and their drivers.)
Then she spoke of the water coming in from above, and went on to explain that her husband, being stocky, can’t climb up properly and put the plastic sheet on the roof. Besides the day they had to buy the plastic sheet, he was at work and she was entrusted with the task of buying it, and she got the wrong size, correct length wise, but short breadth wise; so now they’re stuck with a roof that only provides part protection and the water keeps coming in. Animatedly they exchanged notes about their husbands, how Vibha’s knows how to build a house, and has built enough of a good rapport at work so that whenever he needs it, labour is easy to find. Like last year when the roof of her house came crashing down. Fortunately Anita was around when it happened though Vibha was at work, and she took in Vibha’s kids and called to inform her (yes, they have cellphones!). Vibha was shocked, how could my house just fall like that? But her enterprising husband came with a bunch of men from work, and they put it up again within an hour. My house is also bigger, Vibha said proudly, and drier because it’s at a higher level, so the water takes much longer to seep through. And it has four layers of thick plastic as roofing, so the water doesn’t come in from above. They went on to speak of some unruly relatives, and how friends are so much more precious in times of need, and of demolition drives, when everyone comes to everyone’s rescue though some neighbours do take advantage and steal. Mostly it is the Corporation (BMC, or whoever is entrusted with demolitions) workers though. They take away all good stuff, the utensils, the gas cylinder, even the bamboo poles used to make houses. All this accompanied with much smiling and giggling.

It had something of a humbling effect, this ‘girly’ conversation with my maids. It reminded me of how petty I can sometimes be in my concerns. It reminded me of the resilience of people, especially the poor in this country and I suppose in the world, and their ability to smile and be happy in situations that seem so hopeless to me. I wondered about my own ‘armchair intellectualism’, and its usefulness, if any. I wondered about the order of things- how it’s always been and will always continue to be (so why despair over it?)
And having gone through the motion of pondering over such questions, no wiser in the end than at the start, I sat down and wrote this post.

Meanwhile, it continues to rain.

Good Boy Update 2

2011-08-23T01:55:00.003+05:30

This really should have been posted the very next day, so is rather belated, and much has happened since.
Still, for the sake of record, here's how the online conversation went.

'I never once skirted the topic. first time I read kill bill 1 (he prefers this name to Good Boy), I said a lot of things.

On kill bill 2, I said different things

None of that was response?

Post that when you told me about the conversation and that I hadn't reacted in a MAJOR WAY to being written about, and I said 'it was so unremarkable' - I meant that to be your response to whoever asked you about my reaction.

Pooja says to question asker - his reaction was so unremarkable that it passed without much event.

I didn't once say the writing / being written about was unremarkable.

thus seriously serious misinterpretation!'

Good Boy Update 1

2011-07-07T02:22:00.003+05:30

A friend of mine asked me how the Good Boy feels about being written about.
I don’t know, I said.
Surely he read it, he said.
Yep, I said, but he didn’t say anything.
How is that possible.
Well, that’s just how it is.

So later in the day I asked the Good Boy what he thought about being written about. He still evaded the topic. I persisted.
Finally he said, well I found it so unremarkable, I didn’t think it was worth commenting on.

I’m not sure whether this was a reference to the writing or to the fact of being written about, though it sounds like the former. But hey, there it is.

Walking with the people

2011-07-05T00:43:00.054+05:30

I think it would be safe to say that we’re living in very interesting times (meant in the way the ancient Chinese used it.) Incredibly hard times too for many millions, and it is these very people who will make it more interesting still.
When I look around me, at the state of the country, at its corruption and its politics, its treatment of its own people, whether they be those dispossessed of their lands in the mineral rich Orissa or Chhatisgarh, or those dispossessed of their homes in the slums in Delhi or Mumbai, all those who suffer at the hands of ‘development’ and whose struggles never quite make it to any mainstream, national newspapers or TV channels, I wonder how its possible that they won’t someday join hands and rise to awaken the middle class out of its 8-plus-percent growth induced slumber.
Surely the conditions are ripe for a people’s revolution? Though I have no idea what shape it would be in, and who would lead it.

For the moment, I am completely taken in by a small people’s movement raising its head in Golibar in Khar East in Mumbai. I’ve been following it only for the last 6 months or so and it’s been fascinating so far. For a history of the movement check:
Khar East Andolan website,
and this post about Golibar on the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan website.
Here is Javed's account:
Invisible Cities Part 7: the Golibar Diary
(Javed Iqbal is a brilliant young journalist who shoots as well as he writes- or is it the other way round? His reportage of Chhatisgarh/ Tribal/ Maoist struggle is insightful, powerful writing. And some of his pictures are haunting to say the least.)
And here is a Times Crest article by Ashutosh Phatak and Chatura Rao.

When I heard of the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, I was reminded of all that I had read about people’s participation in the design process while researching for my dissertation back in architecture school. There have been many instances and experimentations around people’s participation in designing spaces, usually homes for themselves, from around the world, and it was (then) an evolving process, as it is bound to be. And yet it held tremendously exciting possibilities. More than anything else, it seems only logical that people should have a say in how they want to live. Yes, we need experts to work things out, and sometimes to demonstrate better ways of doing things, but as end users, it only makes sense that people have a say in the kind of spaces they want to spend their lives in. This becomes even more critical for a settlement like Dharavi, which is not just residential but home to many cottage industries providing livelihood to many thousands. But that’s a whole separate debate.

Coming back to the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan. I have yet to understand it fully, but from what I gather these people are demanding (apart from their rights over their homes and lands) that rehabilitation be a collaborative process, not something that is forced on them. Having aided in building the city, they feel they are perfectly capable of building their own homes. While I’m not sure how the modalities of that would be worked out, it’s definitely an idea worth working on, and a fantastic initiative on the part of the people. If only our government could in turn, live up to the challenge. At the moment they don’t seem interested. Understandably. Much of the politics and by consequence public policy in this country, is heavily influenced by various pockets of money power. In this case it seems to be the builder lobby. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that they just want the people’s land; they’re not really interested in engaging with them at any other level. The ill-designed and maintained SRA buildings would stand testament to this. ‘Redevelopment’ is the new mantra, and there are enormous profits to be made, if the huge tracts of slum lands in the city can be freed up. This however necessarily involves rehabilitating thousands of people, many of who are migrant workers in the first place. This further involves massive administrative exercises of establishing the number of households eligible for redevelopment, which would be a constantly evolving number, of finding means of establishing ‘rights’ of these people who are not original inhabitants of the city, Constitutional provisions to the right to work and travel anywhere in the country notwithstanding. It involves taking the people’s consent to take away and homes and lands, and to ‘rehabilitate’ them in ill conceived, perhaps even inappropriate high-rise buildings.
None of these are debated in the public sphere of course, because if they were the government would be forced to face uncomfortable questions. And its records of rehabilitation are dismal to say the least. Given this context, the GBGB seems a logical if inconvenient response by the people. And has been largely ignored by the government, as far as I can tell.
Anyway, the Golibar people’s spirited fight for their homes reached a new milestone last month with some people from Ganesh Krupa Society sitting on a fast led by Medhatai Patkar, and the State Government agreeing to some their demands. A month later it turned out that the State Government didn’t want to honour the promises they had made to the people. So the people decided to take to the streets. They decided to walk from Golibar to Mantralaya, and meet the CM yet again. They were joined by others from all over the city, many of who were similarly aggrieved.
I joined the walk for a few hours on both days, curious to see the faces of these people, many of them hardly literate, who were nevertheless driven to fight for their rights by a corrupt, exploitative and unresponsive administration. And they chose to do so in a very Gandhi-ian way, using a non violent but forceful approach. All along the way they shouted slogans. A few articulate young men at the head of the procession constantly spoke about their grievances in the microphone, aiming to educate the people along the way and garner their support. At times the procession halted so Medhatai could give a short speech.
And so it was that to shouts of ‘ladenge, jeetenge’, ‘awaz do hum ek hain’, ‘buildaron ki jagir nahin, Mumbai humari hai’, ‘Maharashtra shasan hosh mein aao, bhrashtachar band karo’, ‘Rajiv Gandhi Awaas Yojana laagu karo, laagu karo’, ‘mukhya mantri samvaad karo’ and my favourite ‘sarkar humse darti hai, polce ko aage karti hai’, people walked from Golibar in Khar to Mantralaya over two days, the 28th and 29th of May 2011.
Here are some pictures of the walk.

Women Power!

Curious cab drivers look on and take videos of the people walking. They prbably understand their reasons to protest all too well.

Some walking barefoot.

Walking under ever darkening skies. Soon after this image was taken, it started to pour.

Day 2: I joined the yatra at Lalbaug. Here Medhatai addresses the people...

... to an enthusiastic response.

Sangharsh Yatra!

Yes, this kid marched all the way. A country where children have to fight for rights to their homes (or lands as in Orissa) has much to answer for...

This one kinda 'marched' all the way too!

Ah smiles! I envy the photographer... was it Javed?

'Zameen and zameer bechna band karo'

Yes, it does get tiring, walking all day.

Vada pav- quick snack break.

Walking by the side of the road, so as to not disrupt traffic. The procession walked in a long queue of twos through the narrow streets of Golibar, and by the side on the main roads.

Walking, accompanied by the police.

The tireless Medha Patkar.

Informing the people along the way...

Keeping the NAPM flag flying high.

I had messaged a friend to get directions to Lalbaug, and he mentioned he was driving past the very area. So I asked him if he had seen the procession, so he could give exact current location. "No, flew over them all, I guess... With the new flyover.' Prophetic words, I thought to myself.

Md Ali Road. This is where a man walked up to me and asked if she was Medha Patkar. 'Heard of her, never saw her before.' he smilingly said.

Passers by stop to listen.

VT Station

Negotiating with the Police.

There were barricades near the VT station to prevent the yatra from proceeding towards the Mantralaya.

So the people went to Azad Maidan instead...

And sat there in protest while Medha Patkar and few other representatives of the people went to have a word with the CM.

Coffee post midnight is a bad idea... Contd

2011-06-29T12:58:00.002+05:30

Is it the caffeine
that’s keeping me awake
Or thoughts as yet unthought?

My head hurts
from lack of sleep
But I struggle to stay awake
hoping to finish that one last conversation with you
Inside my head.

Coffee post midnight is a bad idea

2011-06-29T03:36:00.000+05:30

Is it the caffeine
that’s keeping me awake
Or thoughts as yet unthought?

I met a Good Boy! Part 2

2011-06-22T23:47:00.004+05:30

(Continuing from previous post...)

This is scary at several levels, and I am wondering where to begin.
I happened to mention this to a friend and she squarely blamed his Southern roots. While I’m not sure I agree with her, it gives me a starting point. Of course this is a cultural thing- it is, I suppose a very (South? No, I think) Indian phenomenon that the woman you date and the woman you marry are different. I’m not a man and women don’t seem to follow such rules, not at least the ones I know, so I can only wonder at the reasons for this unique trait, so bear with me while I wonder aloud in an attempt to understand. Though I do wish to limit the scope considerably, primarily because the part that interests me the most in this situation is the guy in question or what I have understood of him. Which also happens to be the most surprising part. You see there’s a certain kind of behaviour one comes to expect from a certain kind of people. It’s not right of course to judge people by pre-conceived notions, and yet we do it all the time. So it is that we would be surprised for instance, if an old dhoti clad man in a village suddenly broke into say, Spanish. Ok that’s a bit extreme, but you get the drift...
So as I mentioned earlier, he isn’t from some small town where people, especially men, can still be expected to be regressive in their attitude towards women. He’s from Mumbai, the cosmopolitan city where arguably India’s most progressive men reside. He’s not from an underprivileged economic background or lacking in education. He holds a Master’s degree. He’s not from an underprivileged social background i.e. he’s not from some backward caste; this clarification is for those of you who may still believe that that plays a role. He is in fact from a snobbish upper caste. He’s not from the North, for those of you who think this is a peculiar trait of the brash Delhi/ Punjabi lads. He is a good South Indian boy, and those according to my friend are prone to toeing the line and marrying within the community, a trend that is in any case more prevalent and rigid in the South. It’s not like his childhood or adolescence was deprived of female company i.e. he wasn’t sent to some Boys only boarding school. He’s grown up and studied in Mumbai. He’s not geeky, and shy or incapable of a good conversation like some of those engineer types can be. In fact there’s enough on his blog to suggest female company, love, lovemaking, longing, heartbreak, loneliness; basically the works. He’s not even Mama’s boy, he actually lives by himself though his family is in the same city, and shuttles between the two houses. And while he doesn’t cook, he does do the cleaning himself. So within an urban scenario, have I taken care of most of the stereotypes then? And established conclusively that he cannot be slotted in any of them?
Further, here is a man who gives up a lucrative corporate job to follow his love of writing and films. Here is a man who, as I have mentioned before, dares to write not just of his dreams and aspirations, but also insecurities, not just his achievements but also his failures. He speaks of having lost in love, and of extreme loneliness. He speaks of being lost in general and the struggle to gain composure. He writes film reviews that I identify with. And he writes lovely accounts of mundane everyday things like meetings, which were infinitely exciting for him, for he was on a new unknown path. Of course one could argue that some of that stuff is the writer in him, but even so, it has to be coming from somewhere! I always like to point out about my camerawork, or anyone else’s for that matter- that one frame is not one moment of brilliance, it is the result, or an amalgamation if you please, of many years of a life lived- in happiness, in grief, in regret, in failure, in love, in tears, in beauty, in pain… its many experiences, and the marks they leave on us, and the attitudes with which we go forth after. The same I suppose, would be true of writing.
Which part of him then, is not utterly likeable? Not for regular folks maybe, I understand. I mean if you were a father looking for a match for his daughter, you would make sure he was the last guy on earth she met. But for someone like me… why, here was someone who I could totally relate with. But that isn’t the point I was trying to make. The point is- here is somebody who is clearly a black sheep, as many admittedly, in the film industry are.
And the point is there is nothing stereotypical about the guy.
Except perhaps the dream of making films, which is a dream common to many in this city.

So how does a guy like that come to believe that the only way he was going to get married was if his mother found someone? Is that some kind of submission or delusion, I don’t know.

I feel the need to clarify here that I have absolutely nothing against matrimonial sites or arranged marriages. I don’t believe that there is a gospel truth to anything, including love and marriage. Whatever works for you! However, I do imagine that it would work better for a certain kind of people, with a certain kind of attitude. And as a corollary, it would not work particularly well for a certain kind of people, which is what is relevant in this case. But here is someone, smart and experienced, who is convinced that its not just possible, it is the only way! It makes me wonder if he is losing the plot somewhere, or I am.

But that is only a part of the problem, if I may be allowed to call this a problem. The other part of course, is the one in which the Good but lonely Boy decides he wants company. And sets out to look for it. Please note that he is convinced that he cannot find a bride to marry, but is hopeful nevertheless of finding a companion for all those long, lonely evenings. Clearly there must be something fundamentally different about the two. I am not even going to attempt this one. Apart from the fact that it is beyond my comprehension, it is downright hypocritical. It may be unfair and harsh to make a sweeping statement like that about someone who may well be in that situation for a wide variety of reasons, however I’d be hard pressed to find one in which I would find such an attitude justifiable… Understandable maybe, justifiable unlikely.
I recall he mentioned once in a similar context that he felt he was born in the wrong country. I’m not sure women in any part of the world would be happy with this. Hell, no one should be happy with a stopgap arrangement kind of love. And no, this isn’t remotely about feminism. It doesn’t matter if the positions were reversed. If a woman were doing this- looking for a male companion to fill in a gap, I would find it equally reprehensible.

But what I found even more intriguing was the thought that if he believed it was somehow possible, that there must be willing women as well?
So what does that mean? That there are all these lonely souls out there, looking, craving even, for some kind of temporary comfort? A no questions asked, no strings attached kind of closeness that seems possible only with a stranger or another of their own kind? Is this some kind of desperate attempt to clutch at romance as it should be, natural and spontaneous as opposed to pre ordained, which is how love in their marriages is destined to be (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.) Is this an attempt at creating a memory to cherish and to live by? Or is it just the thrill of tasting fruit that will soon be forbidden?
Maybe a little of some or all of the above?

The redeeming factor in the case in question was the honesty. There was no attempt to mislead; there was in fact candour in admitting to his helplessness, which I have to say was almost endearing. It wasn’t even helplessness really, just a detached kind of submission. It made me realise that at least he had the kind of attitude that would be invaluable for the route ahead. Or perhaps that’s putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps the attitude stems from the submission to the situation. In any case, while the chances of this guy or his mother finding a companion of the kind he desires from a matrimonial site are questionable, that he will be able to align himself to whoever she picks for him is less so.

I met a Good Boy! Part 1

2011-06-16T03:12:00.005+05:30

At the screening of ‘I Am’, I had a somewhat unusual guest.
This guy had contacted me through a travel website, in an attempt at ‘networking’. A travel website is not the best place to network, I remember mentioning to him; that there are social networking sites such as facebook or professional ones such as Linkedin for that, and his response that he is on neither, kind of won him some brownie points at the outset. (I later learnt that he had written to some 30 odd people and I was the only one who responded. Well, what can I say, I’m nice. And that’s certainly not saying very much about the others in this industry, whatever reports to the contrary you may hear.) So I replied, and agreed to meet him, for whatever it may be worth. With a warning that I wasn’t going to be very useful to him from a networking point of view, since I pretty much sucked at it myself. In the meanwhile I read up his profile, found much that resonated with me and figured that anyone who wrote like that couldn’t be some random guy. Or maybe it happened in the reverse order. I read his profile and decided it was okay to meet this guy. Whatever.
And then I got busy doing random shit, and forgot all about him. That’s not like me, mind you. I usually keep my word. So one day many weeks later, when I got another request from the same site, I suddenly remembered him. Wrote again and apologised. I could sense the pleasant surprise in his tone (At the apology? At the fact that I remembered?) when he wrote back to say, ‘No problem. Let’s meet now.’
What followed was two months of correspondence over mail and chat and lots of exchanges of interesting music, links to articles and blogs, about films, life, poetry. Along the way I discovered his blog, about 4 years old. It had ‘various pieces of expression, in varied forms whether it be poetry, life notes, or thoughts on films / books / music or anything else that inspires...’ His writing was honest and heartfelt, and really good in parts. I think what I liked best was the ability to share his fears and struggles, in I suppose, what he referred to as ‘life notes’. It’s a lovely quality, I think- to be able to bare yourself like that and to allow people a peek into your world, even when you’re writing from the very depths of your own personal abyss. There were very distinct phases that one could make out, of personal and professional lows, although the tone in general seemed to have been low for a long, long time. Now that made me think. Or rather it made me rethink my decision to meet him. It also made me realize something about my friends and in turn about myself- that I liked to surround myself with happy, cheerful people. No seriously, its not like my friends don’t have problems, or personal and professional highs and lows. But they all, invariably, have a sense of humour. They smile a lot, laugh a lot, crack jokes and are generally merry, even if that is sometimes aided by alcohol and certain banned substances. And I have friends from all kinds of backgrounds. Architects struggling with clients, writers and directors with great scripts no one’s willing to make into films, NGO workers struggling for space and funds, journalists and documentary filmmakers who see a side of India that would make anyone sob… But even when the going is tough, they manage to smile through it. Or is it? Is it that I am too detached? There for them only in happy times, not so much in the difficult ones. Does no one ever think of calling me when they are sad, or in trouble? Am I only a friend in good times? A troubling thought, that. Many of my friends are incredibly strong people though, I should note at this point. When I think of them, and the images run through my head, I feel blessed that I know so many good, talented, loving, compassionate, creative, beautiful people. It’s a humbling feeling.
But I digress.
So. This guy was anything but cheerful. Nevertheless, I had given my word. So after an exchange of particularly long mails, necessitated by an out of station shoot, in which several threads of conversation had to be abandoned for a more suitable, face to face interaction at a later date, we were finally in the same city and free i.e. ready to meet. This long exchange coupled with the blog writings made me feel like I knew this guy really well already. Now all that was left was to put a face to the name. (That’s not entirely true, for the travel site did have a few pictures, but still.)
So we met. And we did a walk and talk. I wasn’t perfectly at ease, but it was ok. A couple of days after that, he came to see ‘I Am’. And that’s when I realized that it is a bit weird when you think you know somebody really well, but his existence has only ever been limited to a name on Google Chat. So you may be perfectly comfortable with the presence online, having long chats, interspersed with long silences, making you feel as if you’ve almost spent the day with the person (and I mentioned this to him when it happened) but there’s an awkwardness still when you meet in the physical realm. That face, that voice, that body I was not used to, and something seemed utterly unreal. But that mind I was oh-so-familiar with. I mention this in so much detail because I find it very interesting. It’s probably not the first time that I met someone in reality after I met him online. But it definitely was the first instance of having a long online correspondence, over the course of which I came to realize how much not just his thoughts and ideas, but also his fears and insecurities resonated with mine. I had grown fond of the online avatar, the one that I was familiar and comfortable with, and felt I understood well. To meet then almost meant shattering that myth, for I felt it would never be the same again. I think I might even have delayed the meeting a little for this reason! That is exactly what happened too, and it did take at least a couple of more meetings to become as comfortable with the person as I was with the name and the brain that ticked behind it.
It may be clear by now that this was no longer a ‘networking’ meeting. At some point in all those interactions, I had realised that this attempt was part of a lonely guy’s search for companionship. It wasn’t apparently the first time that he had sought company through posts on websites, but its not difficult to guess where the others would have led him, if they led anywhere at all. And he was surprisingly open about talking about these attempts and their apparent failures (assuming that he did indeed speak of all of them.) At any rate, loneliness formed part of our common ground.
Time for another digression. Loneliness is something I am familiar with. You see, I’m not a happy person when I am single- I like to have someone to come back to, to share my day’s stories with, to share the excitement of discovering a fantastic new play or film together, or a shoulder to cry on when things aren’t going so well, to travel with whether it is to town for a screening or backpacking across some obscure country, and of course to occasionally have bitter fights with (anyone who knows me even vaguely knows that that’s part of the package.) Of course all this has mainly been in theory in my head, since I have unfortunately been single for a long, long time now, and family, friends and housemate have had to make up for it. Its not like I haven’t dated, though that too was sometime back. And the guy was absolutely fantastic. Trouble is, we couldn’t be more different. Quite the odd couple we were, more friends than lovers. And so we knew it could never work, and at some point we decided to part. We remain great friends still. I turn to him for every little and big thing, to him and to other friends. But the longing for a companion, someone closer than a dear friend, stays.
So then coming back, loneliness and longing for companionship was then the common ground over which we met, a dangerous ground to meet on, if you ask me. And I was quite aware of that, and had used it as a shield for a while, even in our online conversations, maintaining a safe distance and occasionally frustrating the hell out of the guy, I suspect. It didn’t help though that he was actively on the lookout for a date, and not willing to give up. And it helped even less that he is much younger. So cut to the chase, and we met a couple of times more, and some more walking and riding around aimlessly, and random conversations followed. You might wonder what I was doing meeting someone like that. To tell you the truth, I too thought that he might be a bit of a freak ☺ But then there was something very disarming about his honesty, and besides, his writings seemed to suggest a rather sensitive, passionate person.
And the person I met did seem true to his writings. Pleasant, easygoing, talkative, humorous, well mannered; he was all of that. Yes, I did say humorous- if he was indeed in as much of a low phase as his writing seemed to suggest, then it certainly did not show in his behaviour. Hanging out with him was easy. After the initial hiccup of the first couple of meetings, it all seemed very comfortable, taking me quite by surprise. But of course this was no casual meeting, he was categorical about his intention to date. I was toying with the idea, even though he was quite the kid. And I realise that that doesn’t necessarily have to do so much with age, as with levels of maturity and attitude towards life. But in any case, the age difference did trouble me. Also, questions such as ‘are you a ‘here and now’ kind of person or ‘where is this going’ kind of person’ had set alarm bells ringing.
Soon enough, inevitably, The Conversation happened. Quite short it was too. Here’s how it went. I had mentioned questions swimming in my head. He wanted to know what they were. So I clarified that while I was quite the here and now kind of person, and understood the importance of living in the moment, and spending time together and figuring out how one feels, I was at the same time, not flippant. I don’t get into things unless I mean to take them seriously. This led to a short discussion on the meaning of ‘seriously’. If seriously meant, he said, that it might eventually lead to say, marriage or spending our lives together, then that is something that’s not in his control. That key has been handed over to his Mom. Yes, you read that right. That is exactly what he said. No kidding! And to be fair to the man, I did know this. A simple google search, which I had had the wisdom to do, and later brought up in our conversations online, had revealed a profile on bharatmatrimony.com. He had taken pains then, to explain that there was nothing at all wrong with that route, that he had reconciled to it as the only way he was going to get married, and having done that, had found it easy to write up his own profile, a much more honest account than what he felt his doting mother had written.
So there it is then. I knew of course that such men exist, these good boys who will date and mate to kill time while their good mothers find appropriate brides for them. I just never imagined that one of them would find his way in my life. I think I’m still blinking my eyes in disbelief. It would have been easier if the guy was from some small town, or belonged to a different class or wasn’t as well mannered and well behaved as this guy is. This guy is one of us.
And that is a scary thought.

'If there's a heaven, I imagine it would be a library'

2011-06-15T01:05:00.007+05:30

The paper today carried an article about a 5000 sq ft reading room and library in Bandra. A reading room! In Bombay! Brought memories flooding back. I don’t remember the last time I was in one of those- probably the library at FTII, back in 2006. And yet some of my best childhood memories are to do with books.
In Apeejay, my first school, my favourite periods used to be Sports, Dance, Art and Library! We would have one library period a week, and were only allowed to issue one book. This of course was just not enough. So Ritu, the best friend and avid reader herself, and I were constantly exchanging books mid week. These were times of countless Noddys and Enid Blytons and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews. I remember standing in queue at the chubby, fair librarian’s desk, so she could note down in her register the name and number of the book that each of us was issuing. I also remember wondering in later years if the stuff we read had any bearing on what was picked for us as awards at the end of the year. You see awards in Apeejay (for securing a rank in class is the only one I can speak of) were almost always books. So when I got one of the Classics, I wondered if they were tracking what I was reading, and trying to nudge me towards more serious stuff, or when I got a book of Mensa puzzles, that they were encouraging what they thought was a good habit. The only Classics I ever read, I’m ashamed to confess were the translated works of Charles Dickens (I loved ‘A Tale of Two Cities’), Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen… There must have been many more but these are all I can remember offhand.
Anyway, even exchanging books with Ritu was often not enough. That’s where the neighbourhood lending library came in handy. I don’t know if these libraries still exist, but they did when I was a kid, and boy, am I thankful that they did! The libraries I visited stored popular fiction. So I got introduced to the Perry Masons (Erle Stanley Gardner actually), PG Wodehouses, Agatha Christies, Edgar Allen Poes, Sidney Sheldons, Alistair Macleans, Jeffery Archers, Arthur Haileys and Robin Cooks. There was a whole phase of court room dramas and crime thrillers.
Comics were a whole different world. I used to devour Archies. I looked longingly at all the Tintins that a friend of mine owned, but they weren’t available in the local library. It didn’t seem to make sense to waste a whole week of reading on a Tintin so I never issued one from the school library, and I’m sad to say remain a stranger to it till date. I did read some Asterix, but didn’t take to it then. I was the Indian comics fan- Chacha Chaudhary, and innumerable other Pran comics; not so much the intelligent stuff like Target for me, though of course I did read those as well. There was something called Tinkle, but I only have a hazy memory of it. Then there were the Children's Book Trust publications that my parents subscribed to for me- I forget what it was called, but there used to be a monthly magazine that I would read cover to cover. Another favourite was Chandamama, which was not a comic of course, more an illustrated short story collection. And oh, the ever fantastic Amar Chitra Kathas! That was an ocean of knowledge.
The 80s (if I remember correctly) was a time of much Indo-USSR cultural exchange. One of those years was the festival of the USSR in India. That was an exciting year. There were wonderful fairs to go to, where Russian dancers with red cheeks would be jumping around in their colourful costumes. There was the Russian circus, which was just the most fantastic thing I’d ever seen. And there was the Russian book fair! This was introduction to the many Ukrainian folk tales, and to Ivan the Terrible. Oh, what joy!
I wonder where I got it from- perhaps both my parents are a little to blame! My father is an avid reader of newspapers and magazines, with the occasional fiction thrown in. My mother on the other hand, didn’t read much. But when she did it was those Hindi paperback novels- the Surendra Mohan Pathak types (that’s the only name I remember.) I tried reading one once- it was seriously freaky! I was amazed at the crazy imagination of the guy.
The move to Sardar Patel Vidyalaya also coincided with a slowing down in the reading. I don’t know why. Maybe I was dazzled with the whole new world that was SPV. It certainly was a bit of a culture shock. Which is seriously sad because in SPV we had more than one library card, if I remember correctly! ☺ I don’t have many memories of the library at SPV, not as many as those of the Apeejay library or the local libraries anyway. This was also a time of deep regret at not having taken up Hindi as a subject. SPV had a brilliant Hindi teacher in Kamal Satyarthi, and I longed to attend his classes. Especially when I heard the beautiful words recited by Sujai and Chetan in the corridor one day- they had memorized Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s ‘Jo beet gayee…’ and were trying to outdo each other! That scene is etched in my memory like it happened yesterday. I tried picking up some Hindi literary fiction around this time, but I was even slower at that, so gave up. Sujai, that absolute sweetheart, is also responsible for introducing me to Calvin and Hobbes, of which I am now a diehard fan.
College doesn’t even deserve a mention. There was little time to read, and given my speed, I was no longer joyfully discovering new authors. I have of course read the one or two odd Ayn Rand, Amitav Ghosh, Rohington Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Marquez, Milan Kundera, JRR Tolkein, Roald Dahl, Haruki Murakami, Manto, Ismat Chugtai (God, I’m really mixing them up!) et al and flirted with Vikram Seth, Kiran Desai, Naipaul, Calvino, Ben Okri, Paul Auster, James Joyce, Kafka, Foucault and many others, without actually managing to finish anything by them. I have also lately been drawn to non fiction, such as the writings of Gandhi, Arundhati Roy, Pavan Verma, Naomi Klein, Malcolm Gladwell and Ramchandra Guha among others. (These are all off the top of my head, it’s hardly the full list. At any rate its easy to see how meager it is.) But the problem now is that I’m awfully slow-anything I start takes so long to finish, I forget where it started!

My attention span has actually reduced over the years… is this something to do with the times we live in? If that is so, and it’s a reasonable assumption, then I’m very glad to have lived through the transition phase, having experienced enough of the old, pre liberalization (for I guess that’s where things really started to change) era of the black and white TVs and limited distractions to actually appreciate that way of life, and not too late for the new Internet age, though I still feel like quite the relic as compared to my younger geeky cousins. I belong to the generation that actually played in the streets, not on PS and XBox consoles and under coaches in Sports Clubs. And read real books, not files on Kindle.

Short attention span notwithstanding, I do still read obsessively. I have to read the newspaper in the morning, otherwise I’m grouchy. If you try making conversation with me while I’m reading the newspaper, I’m still grouchy. I still open up old books just to smell the pages. I happily lap up interesting stuff posted by friends online, mostly on fb and some on their blogs, which I subscribe to. I lose my way often with StumbleUpon. On shoots, you can find me reading articles on my phone (thank God for technology.) Heck, I’ll even read labels on bottles, and medical charts while waiting for the doctor in the waiting room. (And that really is not saying very much for the reading I do these days!!)

I don’t know how and when I lost the habit of reading. And it makes me really sad that I did. I hate it! I remember a time as a teenager, when I was ordered to go to bed because it was way past bedtime, but I was at this crucial point in the story, so I finished the book under the rajai in torchlight. (Yes, I know a lot of you have done that as well.) I just wish I knew how to be that way again.

Once while on Google chat

2011-06-02T14:29:00.001+05:30

You wrote don't
I read can't
and that made all the difference

Fortunately I happened to glance back
even though I didn't correct myself while you were still around

'I Am'- thoughts and learnings...

2011-06-01T15:59:00.009+05:30

In my five-year career as cinematographer, I’ve worked on several different kinds of films- shorts, corporate films, music vides, documentaries, ads... I’ve even assisted on one and a quarter feature films. Of all these, some of the most satisfying experiences have been documentaries, and none more so than the film I saw a few days back, the documentary ‘I am’.
In the filmmaker’s own words, ‘I Am chronicles the journey of an Indian lesbian filmmaker who returns to Delhi, eleven years later, to re-open what was once home, and finally confronts the loss of her mother whom she never came out to. As she meets and speaks to parents of other gay and lesbian Indians, she pieces together the fabric of what family truly means, in a landscape where being gay was until recently a criminal and punishable offense.’
The film flows seamlessly through the several ‘coming out’ stories interspersed with Sonali’s own, of coming home, of the regret of not having come out to her mother when she had the chance, the wonder at what her mother’s reaction may have been, and the closure she must reach, further interspersed with a look at the largely homophobic society we live in, the telltale everyday signs in advertising and communication that reiterate heterosexuality as the only normal, the struggle by queers to reclaim their space and freedom, both individual within the family set up and collective in the society at large, and the discovery of a ‘cure’, that most bizarre of ideas propagated by some ‘sex clinics’, all set against the backdrop of the historic judgment, the repeal of article 377, decriminalizing homosexuality in India. Hats off to Sonali and to Anupama (the editor) to have made sense of the enormous amount of footage they had to deal with, and to have come up with this sensitive, moving and layered film.

When I started work on this film, I did not understand the importance of a ‘coming out’. Heck, I didn’t even know such a thing existed. My first introduction to it was through the brief that Sonali gave me over the phone. I have homosexual friends of course- a few, not too many. But we never broached the topic of what it may mean to them to be so. I suppose my friends are urban, aware people who, difficult as it may have been at first, are now comfortable with themselves and their sexuality, so that it no longer shows up in their behaviour or our conversations as something that they may once have struggled with. I had some idea of how it might strain relationships with family members through conversations with one friend, who sometimes spoke of spats he had with his mother over her desire to see him married, in spite of his orientation. But this small window was pretty much all I had.

Shooting this film was revelatory. I was brought face to face with the all consuming confusion, agony and struggle that so many of the people we met had to go through, as they spoke of the process of accepting themselves as being different, and understanding why it was so, in an atmosphere where sources of reliable and unbiased information were few and talk of sex and sexuality was taboo, let alone alternate sexuality.

There are apparently, several stages to coming out. The first is to oneself, perhaps the most important one. The second one is to family, possibly the most difficult one. And the third is to the world, which in turn may happen in steps. It is these coming out stories and the relationships with their family in their aftermath that formed the essential core of the film.
But families are units that live in societies, according to rules set by them. I should know, I have been fighting a slightly different, ongoing battle being the black sheep in the family in choosing a wildly different profession from what everyone was used to, and being single while well into my thirties. My family has been wonderfully supportive, much to my surprise. Even though I realize that they agonise over it every single day, and are occasionally embarrassed by questions raised by friends and extended family. So it was not difficult to see how much more insanely difficult it would be for Indian families to accept a loved one as being anything other than ‘normal’ in their sexual preference, at least for those from an earlier generation.
During the course of shooting the film, we spoke to many people, and their families. Everyone had stories to tell. Some of them were stories of love and acceptance, some of struggle, some of pain, many of confusion and of living in fear and stealth until that moment of liberation, and some of defiance. Of course there were some cases where the families hadn’t accepted their children as they were, and therefore getting to shoot with them was out of question.
It reminded me all over again of what a comfortable life I’d led. I remember writing about my maid back in 2007. Of how she was a mother at an age when my primary concerns were the length of my school skirt or my marks in Maths. It seemed bizarre to even imagine that someone else might have been dealing with pregnancy at the same age. Or feelings of extreme confusion and guilt because she didn’t have a crush on a boy like the rest of her friends.
Most of the people we shot with came from privileged backgrounds. That’s why they could be out there, in the open about their sexuality. These are people for whom it has been relatively easy (though only relatively) to fight society’s prejudices. These are people who are aware and informed, and are able to form themselves in groups and fight for their rights, who are able to publicly party with others of their own kind (no mean feat this, up until a couple of years back when it was decriminalised; before that being gay/ lesbian was actually illegal, and led to much oppression and harassment,) and who are able to navigate the spaces one needs to everyday whether at work or while socializing, with confidence, without letting stares and attitudes affect them adversely.
I got reminded also of an irritation that I sometimes felt towards my dear friend and batchmate in all those years of film school. I had wondered then why he insisted on wearing his sexuality on his sleeve. Why he was always as vocal as he was. The same questions arose as I shot the film. As day after day passed, I wondered why it had to be such an important part of their being, this matter of sexuality. I found the answer soon enough, a two way answer too. As it turned out, when you’re different from the crowd you’re reminded of it, overtly and covertly, by any and all, all the time. You may think that sexuality is a personal matter, but once you’re in the open, a self confessed digresser, our society does not let it remain so. These people seemed to have no choice but to fight prejudices, sometimes on an everyday basis. How then could it possibly not be an essential part of their being, a defining feature, when every single day, day after day they are being judged for it, in places and ways that ought to have nothing to do with it.
The other reason was more altruistic so to say, and I heard it voiced over and over again, by many. And that was to reach out to others like them, all those thousands, maybe millions, who are shackled by the mistaken sense of ethics coded into their consciousness, who may be beating themselves down with sense of guilt and despair, unable to deal with feelings that they’ve been told are not only abnormal, but also sinful, all those without the benefit of a concerned and informed person to confide in and be guided by. Many of them have been in a similar situation, and therefore understand the necessity to speak out, so that others may find the guidance they seek, and the courage to come out themselves.

As we shot the film, travelling from one location to another, and one city to another, I had a lot of questions for Sonali. If she was amused by my curiosity, she never once showed it, always answering in the same controlled voice that I have come to associate with her. Even when talking about her mother, her voice never faltered. It had a tinge of sadness, I often thought to myself, and a restraint that never seemed to come loose. The voice in the film and the trailer is hers, and if you listen closely, you will perhaps understand what I mean.
While shooting films, one often ends up forming friendships, especially between key crewmembers. Not so with Sonali. There was a distance she always maintained, a formal disposition that was not easy to break through. She was polite and fair and funny. She talked a lot, laughed and cracked jokes. She was almost never perturbed by anything. The most excitable that I saw her would have to be at the Pride March in Delhi. But there was something about her that still seemed distant.
Her story, only a part of which one sees in the film, was for me the seed around which the film developed and the key to understanding her motives. To say that it is an intensely personal film would yet not do justice.

You can see the trailer here and I do hope you get to see this lovely film in full sometime.

Of God men and their wise ways

2011-04-24T21:37:00.002+05:30

This article made me wonder if it would not have been a more dignified passing on if the Sai Baba had been in his ashram or wherever he used to stay. Among his devotees. Being a man of God, surely he knew when his time was up?
With apologies to all followers, I mean no disrespect.

Feeling (mis)informed

2011-04-15T19:46:00.007+05:30

So a few days back I came across this TED talk
A case against people’s apathy and blaming instead, ‘obstacles and barriers’ that are placed in our way of meaningfully engaging with our surroundings, even on issues that directly affect us. Nothing new in that, though I have to say the talk was for me interesting and informative anyway.
What I’d like to add to this list is designed and deliberate information overload. We’re living in times of an information revolution. Information is being generated and transmitted at an unprecedented pace, and is more readily and cheaply available than ever before. Especially over the Internet, which has been the vehicle of this revolution.
Here’s a video that brings some perspective to the numbers.
The most telling statistics for me (quoted from the video) are ‘It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.’ and ‘It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4x10^19) of unique information will be generated this year. That is more than the previous 5000 years.’

The problem is that there often is too much of it, and as we well know, too much of a good thing may not necessarily be good. Even if one wants to follow an issue, the amount of information that one is bombarded with is, I suspect, designed to dissuade all except the most persistent followers. That ails much of my effort at staying informed anyway. Two recent cases in point are the debates around nuclear energy and the Jan Lokpal Bill.
For this post, I’m going to limit myself to Nuclear energy.

I’m really rather fed up of the number of conflicting articles in the media around the nuclear energy debate. And I, with my limited knowledge and interest, have probably only some across the tip of the iceberg.
Ever since the tragic tsunami struck in Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis has been constantly in the news. Even in the early days, when the government of Japan and TEPCO claimed the amount of radiation was below levels considered dangerous, the alternative media was full of articles advising Japanese in the vicinity of the plant to move immediately. Reports on the harmful effects of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster were quoted and claims about internal and external radiation and what constitutes ‘dangerous’ were made. There were repercussions across the world, in that nations, including India, began to re evaluate the safety measures in their existing nuclear plants, while Germany closed them down altogether. And the debate around nuclear as a viable source of energy was revived. Mostly good developments these, had there been some kind of clarity.
The proponents of nuclear energy likely have deep pockets. It would be easy to believe, and much of the alternative media claims, that they manipulate data, and put out false information to support their case. Nothing new in this either; misinformation campaigns have long been a handy tool of people in power, or with something to hide.
But when someone like George Monbiot joins the debate, and in the favour of Nuclear, I really begin to wonder. His arguments are compelling, even if the figures he quotes seem less than plausible. What is even more baffling is that he quotes the same reports to build a case for Nuclear. How IS that possible, I ask. All these learned people, experts in their fields (though Monbiot does not claim to be an expert on Nuclear, and quotes sources,) if they can’t reach a consensus, in spite of their pro people credentials, how are the rest of us supposed to make ‘informed’ decisions.

Here are just a few from the ping pong match (can’t find some others):
‘How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power’: In which Monbiot takes a pro nuclear stance

‘Why don’t we judge other forms of energy generation by the standards we apply to nuclear power?’: In which he defends his pro nuclear stance

‘The UN Would Never Lie to George Monbiot’: an attack on Monbiot's pro Nuclear stance

‘How Nuclear Apologists Mislead The World Over Radiation’: Helen Caldicott’s attack on Monbiot

‘We have to be sure our facts about nuclear power are right, as the latest exchange with Helen Caldicott shows’: Monbiot responds

This then seems to be the strategy. Put out so much information, that it becomes practically impossible for anyone to be able to make sense of it all without losing his or her job (where’s the time for a real job with all that reading to do) and mind in the process. The other half of this strategy is to constantly keep people engaged in the business of making a living and to simultaneously keep them hungry for a better life by bombarding them with images of bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger bathtubs, expensive shoes, holidays abroad… the list is endless, or engaged in mindless entertainment (both the gaming and porn industries are big business, and TV and films are only producing formula trash.)
This country is even easier. Most of the population can barely afford two square meals a day. They can hardly be expected to know or care for global warming or the crisis in Egypt, or hell, even stuff closer to home, farmer suicides in Vidarbha or State oppression of tribals in Chhatisgarh. Forget about complex issues like Kashmir! The middle class has been suitably engaged in dreams of a better future, fueled by advertising. If that doesn’t engage them enough, the intense cutthroat competition at the workplace will. And when they come home from all that toil, bombard them with mindless entertainment. Saas bahu serials with more images of impeccably dressed and made up women and docile men, complete this fantasy picture.
The surrender of the middle class is complete.
As for the rich, they’re too busy making their millions, and spending them on flashy cars, designer wear and penthouse apartments, that the aforementioned middle class is dreaming of.
It seems almost a miracle then that we still have a few who do manage to take out time and engage with the world and its crises at all.
And for them, there’s information overload.

That brings me to the Indian context of the Nuclear debate. Most notably the Jaitapur plant. I have read literature circulated by anti Nuclear activists protesting against the plant. Of course I have no way (or maybe not the time or inclination) to actually research their sources and substantiate their claims. However I am inclined to support them. In a country like ours, where everything including morals is for sale, and human life is cheap, it is not hard to believe that dubious technologies are being pushed for kickbacks. Even more likely that corners will be cut in the actual construction and provision of safety/ emergency measures. Even if Nuclear energy had been proven to be completely safe, I would say we would need to be on our guard. In the current scenario, supporting this plant would be nothing short of madness. And if those reasons weren’t compelling enough, there’s the question of secrecy. For a more detailed view, read this.

Another thing that took me by surprise was the Greenpeace India response. They were always opposed to Jaitapur plant of course, but after the tsunami, they changed their stand to being opposed to it because Jaitapur lies in a seismically active zone. Much of the media discourse had of course already shifted to the dangers due to natural calamities and preventive safety measures.
Huh? So does that mean this plant, with the same capacity and employing the same French technology, would be ok if relocated somewhere else? That’s not what I would deduce from the claims made by the anti Nuclear activists. This development made me wonder if the movement was really a larger anti Nuclear one, or was it just concerned with the crisis at hand.

It also made me wonder whether we are ever really ‘informed’ or just humoured into thinking we are.

Ayodhya and Beyond: My two bits

2010-10-01T22:28:00.003+05:30

I don’t get it. Clearly a lot of people around me are not happy with the Ayodhya judgment… and I’m trying hard to understand why, but there seem to be few clues as of now.
Many of the reactions coming in seem to suggest that something of an injustice has been done to the minority Muslims, while those miscreants who brought down the Masjid in 92 have been allowed to go scot-free. I don’t get it though… was this trial about punishing the miscreants or about the land? And if it was about the land and who it rightfully belongs to, what pray is wrong with the judgment?
Apparently the ASI has clearly stated that they found remains of a massive Hindu religious structure below the Masjid. Whatever this structure may have been, does it really matter as long as it existed and was holy to the Hindus? Would it somehow become more acceptable to the so called secular junta if it was something more believable than Ram janambhoomi or Sita ki rasoi? After all what about Indian mythology is believable? The setu floating across the ocean? Or the vanar sena? Or arrows spewing fire? Yet the Ramayana is one of Hinduism’s holiest texts. Isn’t ridiculing the idea of Ram janambhoomi a bit like standing in judgment? Isn’t it enough that the place was, for whatever reasons, holy for a particular community?
What does amaze me however is the language of the court judgment. They actually seem to mention it as the birthplace of Ram. What I’d like to know is, which piece of evidence proves this conclusively?
Then again, there is no denying that the Muslim community was wronged in 92. The same trial could have gone on and the same verdict reached without the demolition of the dome of the Masjid. That was an unnecessary act of aggression and most reprehensible. And most certainly everyone involved in it, including the politicians who fanned the mob fury should be brought to book. However that is a separate matter altogether and therefore a separate trial.
That bring us to the Nirmohi akhara. Now that I am bowled over by. I read several articles on several sites trying to figure out what this mysterious akhara is. Sadly everyone is more concerned about the Mandir- Masjid argument.
Oh well! Turn the monument into a national monument, I say. Let it not be functioning mandir or masjid… God knows there are plenty of those around in this country! Turn it into a museum with a detailed history explained in multimedia installations. Let the next generation learn from the past and take away a message of religious tolerance.

What is our country coming to?

2010-07-08T23:49:00.005+05:30

No seriously, what’s going on???
Large parts of central India are affected by what our Prime Minister has described as Number One Security Threat. While the alternative media cries itself hoarse over the one sided view of Naxalism being painted by the government and the popular media, the tribals, and indeed the common man in Naxalite affected districts, continues to suffer at the hands of both the insurgents and the government troops.

Read the following for some insights… and there are probably thousands more out there…
Arundhati Roy’s article in Outlook
Priyanka Borpujari’s blog (a freelance journalist)
Javed Iqbal’s blog (a photojournalist with the New Indian Express)
I love this take on the rise of the Maoist movement by The Great Indian Clearance Sale

The North East continues to be marginalized.
And now Kashmir is on the boil again. Its been ravaged in the last couple of months by protests against the killings of innocent youths by India’s Security forces, leading to more action by the security forces, and more killings! And now the clampdown on the media… Is this a democracy we are living in?

Following are a few links, some of the many articles floating around…
Rekha Chaudhary’s emotional piece on Rising Kashmir
Muzamil Jaleel article on stone throwing as a form of protest
A moving piece by a young Kashmiri journalist

In the meanwhile people in our megacities seem oblivious to the plight of the majority of the country- a middle class with ever rising aspirations, blinded by the consumerism, with unsustainable lifestyles, consuming ever more natural resources at a rate faster than Nature can replenish, sending their cities to the dogs by building more… more houses, more malls, more flyovers… more, more, more even in the face of crumbling infrastructure. What is this ostrich mentality? Its so stupid it’s nearly unbelievable…
Is there hope at all for us as a nation?

Life is beautiful

2010-03-31T13:59:00.005+05:30

Recounting the events of an evening not long ago.

Today was one of those days. A day when things happen. And make your life a little more meaningful. But also a day that makes you question your life.

Saw Deepa Bhatia’s film, ‘Nero’s Guests’. The film itself is not spectacular but its protagonist most certainly is. The film follows P Sainath, a man who has devoted his life to a study of India’s rural affairs, and most notably its recent agrarian crisis. And Sainath is an angry man. Not hard to see why, for the last few years he has been following the trail of suicides in the cotton belt of India, a symptom, he says of the larger agrarian crisis of ‘corporatisation of Indian agriculture.’ It can’t be easy to be faced with the despair and helplessness in those thousands of faces, knowing that there’s little he can do to help them. God knows it was difficult enough to see the film without a lump in the throat.
He is also a good speaker, a fallout one assumes of the many talks he gives regularly. His knowledge of the subject is commendable, and his arguments forceful. I have read Sainath before, even some of the one-liners that he used in the film and later while interacting with the audience. (I guess in this country one ends up being repetitive in order to simply be heard.) He always comes across as well researched, and today was no exception. The pleasant surprise was to see his impressive personality and aura. Though maybe it should not have been.
The film was well made. It was a film about the agrarian crisis as seen through its protagonist’s eyes, and delivered on that front. It is high on emotional content, often resorting to emotion to drive home a point, sometimes to anger, sometimes sarcasm, and at other times to poetry and story telling. It’s the kind of approach I have often found in Arundhati Roy’s non fiction writings. It makes for very interesting reading, in this case viewing, but you come away wondering if you haven’t also been somewhat emotionally manipulated. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless an important film for the message it holds, which is urgent and yet much neglected.

I came back home to see a crowd at the corner of Ahimsa Marg, where our building stands. This street corner has been witness to much action over the last few days because of the attempts of the residents of the corner building to remove a vegetable vendor who sits on the footpath. He’s been around for awhile, as long as we have been. I never knew there was a problem with his location in the first place, after all he is just selling vegetables, like many other illegal hawkers and vendors in the city… how could he pose a problem to anyone? Besides, how do the residents of a building have any right over the footpath outside, even if it is the one adjoining their boundary wall? That is after all public property. A couple of days back when we headed towards the vendor to get some vegetables, we saw his entire lot strewn over the road, and a large crowd gathered around, with some of the ones in the centre looking rather self important. Even then I had wondered if the goons of some political outfit such as the Sena or the MNS were involved. That’s the one thing that makes us Indians brave. Connections. Backing by local rogue elements.
Sure enough today when I was on my way back from the film, I saw a small board with a picture of Raj Thackery and notice about illegal hawkers at the corner. There was also a row of stone seats installed around the corner, in place of the vegetable vendor, and the dosa and pani puri stalls that existed earlier. There was a crowd again, and upon enquiry I realized that there had been some sort of physical fight, and the police was expected to arrest the vendors.
The vendors?
I can’t help but wonder at our apathy. We want all the conveniences that the underbelly of the city provides us, such as our drivers and our domestic helps, and free home delivery of vegetables and groceries from the local kirana shop, but we’d rather not see them if possible. We believe in beautification drives. We’d rather have a row of stone seats at a corner of an intersection full of traffic, than a bunch of people trying to earn a livelihood. Where do they go, you ask? Well, that’s the government’s lookout, isn’t it?
Another story that the only one I’ve seen sitting on one of those seats ever since they have been installed, is the security guard ‘protecting’ them.

Got home finally. And found this touching photo essay, (link shared by a talented photographer friend, Zishaan Latif http://www.zishaanlatif.com)

Life suddenly seems beautiful in more ways than we find the time to appreciate.

Help, I'm lost!

2010-03-15T16:45:00.004+05:30

I was reading this rather interesting article a couple of days back about sign design (http://www.slate.com/id/2245644/) and its importance, and it struck me how often I have complained about the lack of proper signage in this country. It doesn’t seem awfully complicated to get signage right… if at all, it is probably very logical. Why then are we so poor at it.
The best-marked roads that I have seen here are undoubtedly in Delhi. At some point a few years back, the government woke up to the need for these, and we have clearly marked big blue overhead boards announcing where the roads are headed. Even so, every once in awhile one finds a major turn unmarked, leading to much inconvenience, such as happened with us a couple of months back when we were headed to Sonepat in Haryana. For the longest time my parents were talking about this turn they needed to take towards Sonepat. But in the absence of any proper signs, they had to rely on memory to figure it out. Sure enough we missed it, and overshot by several kilometers before they realized their mistake. And this is an experience of someone who has lived in Delhi for decades now, and has in general a very good sense of direction. God help directionally challenged people like me.
I’m reminded also of my recent trip to Japan, a country where the train network is extensive and excellent, and therefore the preferred mode of travel, and where almost no one speaks English. So did we have problems traveling in Japan… not at all! Apart from the fact that the people are extremely helpful, and do all that can to be of assistance in spite of the language barrier, their maps and signs are excellent guides. Tokyo for instance has the most intricate network, of railways and subways. But all the stations have assistance booths with the exact same map with colour coded routes. One may make a mistake like choose the more crowded train, or the longer route, but it’s almost impossible to pick a wrong route… everything is so clearly marked. Then again, in the stations, the platforms and lines are clearly marked. And make no mistake, I am talking about big underground stations here, and long corridors leading from one line to the next… so much so it seems like another city underneath! The assistance counters too are logically placed. The point is there is a standard logic that has been followed in the design. Once your mind gets used to that logic, it automatically looks for signs in the right places. This would be crucial I imagine for the kind of traffic that the Tokyo rail network handles everyday.

(This brings back such nice memories :) Of lots of pouring over maps, friendly Japanese wanting to help out, and walking endlessly in large underground stations. We were staying in Ikebukuro and used both the Subway and train lines extensively in the three days we were there.)

I’ve never really had that much of a problem traveling by Indian railway either, but then I have grown up in this country. I do wonder how foreigner friendly our signages are. Certainly our road signs can do with some improvement, especially in b-tier cities, towns and villages, heck sometimes even in the metros, as we realized that day on our way to Sonepat.

On the Women's Reservation Bill

2010-03-14T16:55:00.003+05:30

Why is it that in our country reserving seats, for SCs, STs, OBCs, other minorities, and now women is seen as something of a ‘solution.’ Is it really a solution or an easy way out of a problem we no longer know how to address because it is too steeped in history, and complicated?
I am all for women’s empowerment, and if reserving seats can indeed lead towards that goal, then sure enough it’s the way to go. But where is the evidence to support this claim? For years now we’ve been relaxing entry requirements and reserving seats in colleges, and even in government jobs. Has there been a study to show much exactly this has helped?
My argument in this case is not very different from what it was regarding reservations in schools and colleges. The challenge is to create opportunities so that people from disadvantaged sections of society can rise up and compete with the rest on a level playing field. Spoon feeding jobs and seats in educational institutions, or now elected bodies, to undeserving candidates cannot and should not be the solution.
Women’s empowerment will be a reality when the men in our society learn to respect every woman, not just the elected representatives they must. It calls for a change in mindsets, a socio cultural revolution that can hardly be brought about overnight. But we do need to identify steps that we can take right away that might eventually lead to this miracle, even if it takes decades to fructify.
Is reservation then one such step? I’m not sure. We have seen enough puppet women leaders, being used as affronts for their husbands and fathers who are really the ones in charge. This is a dangerous phenomenon, though a natural extension of the gender hierarchy prevalent in society.
On the other hand, thanks to the reservation for women in local government bodies, many women have been elected to office in the last decade or so. Even if a small percentage of these women have subsequently realised their potential and assumed power the way they were meant to, the move could then be called something of a success. It should then be replicated yes, in other government bodies, but more importantly the success stories told and spread so other women can follow in their footsteps. And it is this that needs to be studied and offered as evidence that reservation actually works.
It is not a small job that we offer these women, we are talking about running the country here… a job that has admittedly lost much charm because of the dubious credentials of the many men who hold public office. Nevertheless, its importance cannot be undermined. And so it should necessarily require a certain amount of competence to be elected to a governing body, being a woman should hardly rank as eligibility criteria.

About the Delhi Metro

2009-12-27T23:01:00.004+05:30

Four months, unbelievable! And this will probably be last post of the year too… My New Year resolution should most decidedly be to write more regularly!

Two things made me come back to this rather neglected piece of cyberspace… the first was some genuine appreciation showered, quite undeservedly, especially in light of my recent disappearance, of this blog by a friend I met after a good 10 years, at a college reunion. The other was an observation I couldn’t help making while traveling in the Delhi Metro.
I love the Delhi Metro… this city badly needs better public transport, and having seen how well trains work in Mumbai, I always thought the Metro would be a great idea for Delhi. Don’t get me wrong, I have no idea whether it is the ‘ideal’ solution, nor do I know whether all the people displaced or otherwise affected by the Metro have been adequately compensated. What I do know is that the trains are fast, and they criss cross the city connecting the farthest corners, making traveling much easier (and yes, this is relatively speaking, have you ever tried getting onto the buses in Delhi?) So in that sense, the Metro is fantastic.
Besides, having travelled to Japan, and extensively in the trains there, I have realized how well a good train network can work. So what’s irking me? The design of the train! I find it strange that in a country like India, with the number of people that take public transport, the jokers have provided exactly one rod with handles to hold onto in the centre of the train. So of course the vast majority of the people do balancing acts and fall over each other every time the train starts and stops. I can imagine providing such few handles in other countries where there may not be as many people per train. But here? In Delhi? Its criminal! Haven’t they learnt anything from the Mumbai locals? I just don’t understand this lack of basic design sensibility… there is something like adapting to context! Is someone from the Delhi Metro listening?

Kudos to Dr Shetty

2009-08-13T21:39:00.001+05:30

And then there was this one about Dr Devi Shetty’s Narayana Hrudayalaya in Bangalore, titled ‘Heart in the right place.’ Dr Devi Shetty must be awesome human being, and is living the adage, where there is a will, there is a way.
In his interview he recounts how, as a doctor in a Calcutta in 1989, out of every 100 patients he saw, 99 could not afford heart surgery. He realized that to really solve the problem, he had to look at how to reduce the cost. Hence was born his idea of Narayana Hrudayalaya- a hospital with state of the art medical facilities, available at a fraction of their costs at other hospitals. This is achieved by staggering the cost across the day. So a brain scan that costs Rs 5000 at 2 pm, will cost only Rs 500 at 2 am- this is possible because the equipment is a one time cost. Coupled with the micro-health insurance scheme adopted by the Karnataka government, that is based on a model of economies of scale, modern healthcare has now been made possible for 80 percent of the state’s population. To quote from the article, ‘since they are so large, and can accommodate so many, the notional cost of each procedure drops drastically- a benefit they can pass on to those who really need it.’

This is a wonderful model, but can only work if welfare, and not only profits, stays a priority. And yet it is important to make it a sustainable model, for it to stay on course and not fall prey to corruption as many government welfare schemes do.

What an idea sirji!

2009-08-13T20:55:00.004+05:30

Every once in awhile, I come across a news item that makes my day… maybe that’s why I religiously start the day with a newspaper… in the last week, it happened twice, thanks to the Hindustan Times’ Inspired India series.

The first one that I am writing about appeared in the Mumbai edition of Aug 7, and was titled, ‘An idea could change your life’. It was one of those news items that you read with a sense of excitement, and pride, and finish with a sense of hope. It spoke about the many simple ideas many simple people across the country regularly come up with. Some of them get implemented, and are able to make a difference to the people who they are able to reach out to, and others suffer a quiet burial in the idea makers’ mind, or as a thesis in a library, or government paperwork…
I can easily understand one of the examples given in the article… that of Same Language Subtitling, as a teaching tool. It’s ingenious… ask me, I know. Many years ago, when I was working with TARAgyan, I was involved in the development of an English Speaking course, under the guidance of Dr Jalaluddin. We developed this course and tested it in a centre (a slum school) in Delhi, before launching it in our local centres in Bathinda and Jhansi. We were always on the lookout for simple but effective ideas such as this, which would be interesting for the student, and help with language skills. And this exactly fits the bill, though admittedly for Hindi/ a familiar language, for a semi literate person. We all know how much Indians love to watch films and television… We produce the maximum number of films in the world every year! Now if people who already have a spoken knowledge of Hindi, but rudimentary writing/ spelling/ grammar skills, are regularly shown films or television programmes with Hindi subtitles, its bound to improve their language skills… the constant exposure to the written word in a language already familiar to them will make it stick in their heads better than any forced reading of unfamiliar text can. I don’t know if this idea has been tested, though the report suggested that it has, but based on my little experience in the classroom , I think I can safely say that it would be very effective. It can be adapted and used for any language teaching, in fact, at a later stage.
What an idea sirji!!

And to think that every engineering student in every engineering college in this country submits such an idea as her thesis at the end of her degree, not to mention the hundreds and thousands of other smart people who are brimming with such simple but wonderful ideas… we could transform this country if only we could tap into all that potential. How many of us have even heard of the National Innovation Foundation, the government body that is supposed to encourage such ideas, and facilitate their implementation on a larger scale. The annual funds available to the NIF is 1.5 crores?! That is ridiculous! If studies could be conducted to scale the benefits, both monetary and the more intangible, we’d find that many of these innovative ideas would probably pay for themselves, and beyond… why then is such a miniscule amount dedicated to finding and tapping them?

Our country is so incredible in so many ways, and it is a tragedy indeed that so many people are never able to attain their true potential.

A friend wrote a book!

2009-05-14T22:25:00.005+05:30

Finished reading KK’s book today.
Kamini Karlekar or KK, as we fondly called her in school, is now an Independent Human Rights Consultant, working with the UN. In ‘(Un)settled: Notes from a shifting Life’, her maiden writing venture, she recounts her experiences of working in refugee camps in post conflict Sudan and Liberia, conducting interviews to determine eligibility for granting refugee status in the camps in Sudan, and to assist in return and reintegration of returning Liberians as well as continued protection of existing refugees in Liberia.
(Un)settled: Notes from a shifting Life, is just that: notes. Written in an almost conversational style, the book reads like entries from a journal. And thus it is that it is able to traverse a whole range of concerns, and talks of history, culture, politics, as well as her travels, love and personal needs with equal ease.
KK talks not just about the experience of working in the camps, but the whole journey that it involved. From immigration stories, to first impressions of every place that she visited, the book reads as much like a travalogue, as a memoir. She includes brief political histories to put things in context, and comments on all that she sees around her, the camps in the middle of the Sudanese desert, the supermarket in Khartoum, the lack of electricity and running water in the capital of Liberia, that also has a five star coffee shop catering to those who can afford it… there are many contradictions in all that she sees around her, and indeed in her own life, especially when she talks of her regular voluntary breaks, and all that she does on them, as also some of the thoughts, of her favourite places, and restaurants around the world, that keep her going on particularly difficult days. The contrast with her work is stark, but she seems comfortable with it, straddling both worlds with equal ease.
Her writing about her work in the camps is reflective. She doesn’t get into too much detail about the individual stories she must have encountered, concentrating instead on the fractured feelings of what home must mean to the refugees, as opposed to what it means to her. She is constantly reflecting on the questions that bother her, even if she is unable to find satisfactory answers to many. Her perspective seems unique, by virtue of the fact that she is a single woman, and Indian. This lends a sensitivity to her viewpoint, as I imagine, to her work.
Her writings about her voluntary breaks and about finding love, are delightfully travelogue-y. She paints verbal pictures of the places she visits, and the people she meets. These are interspersed with personal concerns such as getting manicures and pedicures, and stocking up on groceries, breathers in her otherwise introspective writing. Her efforts at setting up house in Liberia is a case in point.
‘(Un)settled…’ was for me, an easy read. I could identify with KK and her questions and concerns completely, though the closest I have ever come to being in a situation even vaguely like hers was when I volunteered to work in a Muslim camp in Ahmedabad for a week after the Godhra riots, conducting interviews to assess the displaced people’s claims to damage to property. For that week, I experienced the dichotomy that she lives everyday: a dear friend from Ahmedabad refused to let me stay in the dorm that was assigned to us volunteers, essentially a big empty hall in a college, with mattresses spread out on the floor. He picked up my bag, and off we went to his 11th floor apartment, in a relatively uptown neighbourhood. Thus I spent the next one-week, walking around in the heat and muck of June in the camps during the day, and enjoying wine and homemade Italian dinner and coffee in the evening. It was a contrast that I was unable to make peace with all these years; reading KK’s book has helped me achieve that, finally. Nevertheless, that experience had been an eye opener, and I imagine, in an alternate universe, if I hadn’t chosen filmmaking, I might well have been leading a life such as hers. But then again, my experience was all of a week, and she has been at it for years, in unfavourable weather, in isolated UN stations hours away from civilization, sometimes with unfriendly and uncooperative colleagues, many thousands of miles away from what she calls home. It’s an entirely different ball game, and I can only admire her for choosing the life she has chosen.

And so it is...

2009-05-12T01:50:00.004+05:30

In work, as in life in general, what is sometimes most important, more important than the victories and achievements, awards and money, is the dignity and grace with which we conduct ourselves along the way. Whether we can look at ourselves in the mirror without a sense of guilt or shame, whether indeed we are capable still of any amount of objectivity when it comes to ourselves.
It is this that I realized on a recent project that I was on. Perhaps I had a sense of it already, even if only theoretically, but difficult situations tend to reaffirm our beliefs. Or perhaps test them. And a test it was… one that I barely survived. Certainly would not have without the unfailing support and caring love of the man I was working under, and who I shall forever be indebted to, for everything that he was for me, and continues to be.
I often feel that I have been supremely lucky in finding the people that I have in my life, people who genuinely care about me. But more importantly, good people, with love and compassion in their hearts. The world’s a beautiful place because people like that exist and some of them are gracious enough to take lost souls like me under their wings…

And I travel by the same trains, Part 2

2009-03-31T00:01:00.002+05:30

A rant from a long time ago... written on January 26, 2009

H’s brother died today.
I don’t know H too well; he’s a part of the Grip team that I have been working with on the last two shoots. He’s a young boy, all of nineteen, quiet and unassuming. And forever smiling. Today I got to know that he had a younger brother, a brother he lost to a local train accident.
This is about as close as I have come yet to my fears being realized, and now I am angrier and more scared and helpless still. Why is it so? Why is human life so worthless in this country? How many deaths does it take for us to sit up and take notice? Why are small numbers over a period of time so easy to ignore?
It seems to be a pattern. Small offences are forgivable, it takes a big jolt for people to really react. It’s as if we become habituated to things, and learn to accept them, because we feel so powerless to do anything about them. So we react with anger and outrage to bomb blasts that kill hundreds in the same local trains that claim hundreds of lives per month anyway. Somehow these hundred deaths are worth reacting to, their stories worth telling, their families worth supporting, while the other nameless faceless ones who lose their lives in the simple act of leading a normal life on a normal day go unnoticed because its something we have got used to.
Let me try and understand this. I read the papers, mostly HT, and I listen to the news on TV occasionally. And then there is the internet; chain mails, and Facebook groups. There seems to be a lot of anger in the people, especially about the recent attack in Mumbai. And what is it exactly that people are reacting to… the deaths, and the lack of security, the inability of the establishment to deal with terrorism, and to react to emergency situations.
I would have imagined however that there would be curiosity about finding the root of the problem, or atleast a drive towards it. There is most certainly a rise in terrorism. There is also a rise in violence in general, and in the crime rate. There is a rise in intolerance, whether it is towards another human being, or an entire community. And there is a rise in the concept of instant gratification. It’s a reflection of the society and the times we are living in.
Inconveniencing people brings instant gratification. It disrupts their peace, and they react immediately and strongly. And killing near and dear ones is the greatest inconvenience one can cause. If you inconvenience a critical mass of people, you get a certain amount of reaction. A few years ago, a few AK 47s would have sufficed. Then came the bomb. Now its serial blasts. Every time however people got used to it, and the reaction diluted. So I guess the brains behind the terrorists had to get more and more creative about it. They had to keep increasing the critical mass. When serial blasts stopped eliciting the desired response, they decided a change of tactic was in order. Some bright fellow came up with the idea of a sustained attack that would last a long time, a siege, so to say, of a place where the wealthy and the noticeable hang out. November 26 was born.
What next? Serial blasts across the nation?
(I still think the most creative was 9/11. That was a stroke of genius. Or maybe it was obvious to a more disruptive mind than mine.)
And towards what cause? I’m not entirely clear…
There are several points I am trying to make here. The situation is so complex, and there is so much to react to, that it makes me incoherent. I hope I can be excused for it…
The first is the rise in intolerance. It didn’t come about overnight. Nor is it confined to a single act. Its around us everywhere. Its what our children are growing up watching and imbibing. It’s there on the roads when we don’t allow a car to overtake, or grab a parking space. It’s there when we make a run for a bus instead of standing in queues. It’s there when we bribe government officials to get our water connection ahead of people before us. It’s there, and every new generation will be more intolerant that the one preceding it if we don’t accept and address it soon.
The next (ironically) is acceptance. We have learnt to accept injustice, even crime. We have become quietly submissive to restrictions on our daily lives, than fight for our freedom and dignity. So it is than women are afraid to step out after dark in Delhi, or people in Mumbai won’t voice their dissent against the likes of the Shiv Sena or the MNS, or Mayawati in UP or Modi in Gujarat. The force we have to fight is either too large and obscure, or too powerful to fight against. The fight seems too long drawn out, and the rewards too elusive, besides the fight is itself as thankless as it is fraught with danger. Faced with such odds, it’s hardly surprising that people make the choice that they do.
The next is insensitivity. As long as something doesn’t affect us directly we ignore it, or don’t give it its due, until it grows so large that we can’t ignore it anymore. Take the case of the Kashmir problem, or the insurgency in the North east or the Maoist movement in many states.

H’s brother wasn’t the first to die in a local train related accident, nor will he be the last. Accidents will keep happening, and people will keep getting injured and dying, a few everyday, until we decide to do something about it.

People like Us

2008-10-06T00:58:00.002+05:30

While reading the paper today, I came across several times, and in different articles, the same word: vulnerable. Whether it was somebody driving their daughter to school, or hanging around with friends in a pub, or having fun at garba celebrations, the people in this country have a new fear: that of terror.
Its somewhat new, atleast to people in cities likely Delhi and Mumbai, though some pockets of the country have been familiar with it for awhile… and has only recently reached a stage where the common man, ‘people like us’ have begun to feel unsafe in their very homes. Actually it is probably this attitude which has led to this situation. Here’s no denying the fact that out country is multicultural, with cultures sometimes so different that it becomes difficult to completely identify with each other’s problems. And that probably is why in the fast growing, economically well off cities, where it was possible to turn dreams to reality, even the common man chose to ignore and deny the problems of his fellow brother. Everytime there was a massacre in Kashmir, or a killing in Bihar, or a rape in UP, or burning of a Christian missionary in Orissa, or a sati in Rajasthan, or a naked protest march in the North east, or an earthquake in Bhuj, or tribal lands taken away, or riots in Godhra, or the depletion of the ground water table in Kerala because of a multinational soft drink company’s irresponsible manufacturing practices, or farmer suicides in Vidarbha, or the floods in Bihar… the list goes on… we treat it like it’s someone else’s problem. We convince ourselves that we are helpless to do anything anyway, and don’t even so much as raise our voices even when we see a tragedy, or injustice being done in front of our own eyes. We further push the marginalized to the very edges of society, while we are busy with the important business of earning our livelihood, or getting a new haircut or buying car, or discussing the even more important implications of Saif Ali Khan’s tattoo, or Prakash Karat’s opposition of the Nuclear deal with the US, neither of which we can claim to understand. We have informed opinions about how Mamata Banerjee is a hindrance to development, without fully understanding the implications of the land takeover on the farmers who she represents, about Narendra Modi’s criminal ways, without understanding what makes him such a popular leader in Gujarat, about the insurgents in the North east, without understanding why they choose to call their organization a ‘Liberation’ front.
We have been playing living room politics with these people and with their very lives for far too long. It was only a matter of time before they got frustrated at being ignored and sidelined and decided to walk into our very living rooms so that they may finally be heard.

How to spot a teenager...

2008-09-27T18:36:00.002+05:30

A couple of days ago I read a shocking piece of news. While doing age determination tests on women rescued from prostitution rings, doctors realized that the ‘physical’ age of these women was different from their ‘mental’ age. I found the use words rather curious; it could just be a physical or mental deformity, right? It became clearer as I read further; these girls were in their teens but looked much older due to the introduction of hormones in their bodies, to enhance general growth and features such as breasts, leading to fuller bodies at a much younger age. In fact they are even injected with the male hormone testosterone to increase their sexual desire. However the level of testosterone in female bodies is minute, and therefore these practices often lead to an overdose, causing such abnormalities as hoarse voices and facial hair.
How sick are these practices, of flesh trade and forced prostitution? As if all the physical and psychological abuse that these women are subjected to is not enough, there are now ways to physically alter their growth… their adolescence is all but lost anyway, even the tell tale signs of age, that which would allow the more compassionate to interact with them the way it ought to be, is now being messed around with… not even the mirror would be much of a friend anymore.

The next day there was a news item about the increase in flesh trade following the flooding of the Kosi river. Apparently relief camps have become hunting grounds for pimps looking for fresh ‘maal’. A people in distress would indeed be easy to manipulate.

Cinema of prayoga

2008-09-27T01:45:00.002+05:30

Attended this very interesting session yesterday… it was said to be an evening of cinema of prayoga (http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/New-pinch/321754/), films by Ashok Sukumaran and Shaina Anand, curated by Amrit Gangar and held at the National Centre for Performing Arts. Their works however can’t be called ‘films’, in the strict sense of the term, even if one were to widen the gamut by terming them experimental. Though experimental and imaginative they certainly were. Their works can perhaps be described as media interventions or interactive/ installation art. And much like art, they seemed to have little ‘relevance’ though the inherent ingenuity and yet simplicity was marvelous.
Since they presented several projects, its difficult for me to write about all. I found Ashok’s (http://0ut.in/) interactive roadside installations involving electricity rather heartwarming. The connections and interactions they necessitated between people, mostly strangers, and often from entirely different socio cultural backgrounds was wonderful to see. Since this was public art, with free access for anyone who chose to stop and be a part of it, it led to a cross section of people reacting and interacting with the experiment as well as among themselves, united only by their curiosity and sense of participation.
Shaina’s (http://chitrakarkhana.net/ ) works were less obscure and rather more ‘useful’ in many ways. Certainly easier to analyse and use to one’s advantage, though precisely such interference by the State in the public life of the common man, was probably her provocation for the ‘surveillance’ camera series of works called ‘Khirkiyaan’ (http://chitrakarkhana.net/khirkeeyaan.htm). I found this series very interesting. This was more direct interaction, with both sound and video. She hooked up four cameras and television sets with split screens showing images from all four cameras. These were installed within a 200m radius of each other, in different neighbourhoods in Delhi. There were also mikes, allowing real time interaction between the people in front of the camera. Depending on where the cameras were placed, this led to very interesting conversations among the people involved. This was local reality tv with a twist…
I’m not sure of the inspirations or provocations behind their works. But they certainly are doing some fairly interesting stuff.

Shoppers, Stop!

2008-09-14T00:21:00.003+05:30

Shoppers’ Stop advertisements never cease to amaze me.
They are distinctive, black and white images with a tag line, and you can make one out from a distance. The brand recall for Shoppers’ stop is amazing.
Several of them are also brazen and in poor taste.
Sometime ago I had seen one with children playing with toys. ‘Keep them quiet, avoid noise pollution’ or something to that effect, ran the tagline. And today I saw one which showed a woman sitting by the side of the road in a micromini and high heels, with a guy in a motorcycle in the background, who had stopped and had turned around to look at her. The tagline read ‘Wear a short skirt. Hitchhike. Save fuel.’
I fail to see the humour in either. If at all they encourage dangerous trends. The first one encourages parents to fulfill a child’s needs and demands by gifting her toys, an easy way out, and potentially very damaging to the way the child learns to view relationships. The second is totally out of context in India. If a girl tries to do what is suggested in the advertisement, she won’t just get a ride, she’ll likely get abducted, raped, and murdered. One could argue that they are not to be taken seriously just as Sardarji jokes are not, but somehow I find them in poor taste.
Unfortunately the whole Shoppers’ Stop campaign is beautifully executed. It’s simple and classy, and I suspect, pretty much a success. That’s what makes it even more disturbing. Just like the Pond’s White Beauty campaign.

As an aside, let me mention that I have a renewed sense of respect and admiration for all those Sardar boys and girls, who grow up listening to Sardar jokes, and learn to take it sportingly, even when they know that they are some of the smartest people around. A dear friend of mine who is a Sardar with a razor sharp mind and a sense of humour to match, often refers to it as a form of racism. He’s got a theory that I have come to respect. He says that one of the reasons why Sardars are able to do so well in foreign countries, even in the face of extreme racism is that they have learnt to deal with it, because they have faced it in a different form all their lives on their home soil.
It’s something to think about.

To each what he deserves...

2008-09-14T00:18:00.001+05:30

I have been meaning to write about the recent controversy regarding Jaya Bachchan’s remarks, and its aftermath, but for one reason or another, didn’t get around to doing so. In hindsight, perhaps that’s exactly how it needs to be treated. The emptiness of Raj Thackery’s argument is apparent to any sensible and responsible citizen of the country. Why repeat what has already been said umpteen number of times. This attention is exactly what Raj seeks… perhaps a better strategy would be to deny him what he knows he badly needs: press. Report what needs to be reported, but give him as little coverage as possible. That might be a real blow to him.

Bhutan Diary 11: Onwards to Paro

2008-08-26T21:01:00.010+05:30

(Back, after a rather long break...)
Back in Thimphu, and this time we ran out of luck with the Centre Lodge. We parked ourselves in Tandin, a hotel we had checked on the very first day. We decided to eat there as well, for lack of a better option, and I am happy to say, were pleasantly surprised. We sat at a corner table, away from the loud talking Indian crowds that seemed to be the most common of all travelers to Bhutan, and ordered a vegetable sizzler and vegetable fried rice. I remember being very happy with both dishes, so much so, that we ordered another plate of the fried rice, which we could not finish. This is mostly unthinkable for me, for I hate wasting food, and Ramya too had begun to respect this thought and all through the trip, mostly finished all but the most inedible of things on his plate. But we really were greedy that day, and paid a price for it with a heavy sense of guilt.
Over dinner Ramya told me stories of his earlier travels, most of which were undertaken alone, and were singularly unplanned. In the absence of any financial management, he had frequently run out of money, and resorted to all sorts of measures, such as borrowing from friends’ families, traveling in unreserved compartment on trains, and going without food! This trip of ours was proving to be luxurious in comparison, with me taking care of most financial management. He was occasionally piqued by the division of ‘duties’ that I did all the time, but mostly put up a brave, even smiling, face. Another interesting thing about him was how he always managed to find cigarettes. When we had started this trip, he had been most disturbed about the fact that the sale of cigarettes is banned in Bhutan. However, as far as I can recall, he never had a problem finding them.
Our next plan of action was to head to Paro. This we thought we would do by a shared cab or a bus. The next day we headed for the bus station, bag and baggage, and had no trouble finding a bus to Paro. Big mistake. The buses are mostly for the locals, who get on and off the bus anywhere, and all along the way. I lost count of the number of stops we made along the way, or the number of times I cursed myself for the unnecessary inconvenience. On the upside, it was a slice from the life of a regular Bhutanese, and to that extent, interesting. We witnessed (possibly) the first argument between two Bhutanese, the conductor and a passenger over the charges for carrying a wooden box on the bus.
Once in Paro, we started our customary search for a decent accommodation. Ramya waited with the luggage, while I looked around, but the best I could find in the deadline we gave ourselves was the Hotel Perjoling. There was another, cleaner, more spacious hotel, but it had no heater. This, as I mentioned before, was just unthinkable. We dumped our bags, and promptly headed out to grab a bite.
Paro seemed even more spread out than Thimphu, with the town centre, which is where we were at, smaller than Norzin Lam. Like Norzin Lam, there was one main street here as well, lined with shops and hotels on both sides. And needless to say, all around us in the distance were the mountains.
We looked up our printouts, and settled for the first place we saw that featured in the list. This happened to be Sonam Trophel, on the first floor, in the main street. There was little choice for vegetarians, and the gum chewing hostess seemed less than interested in serving us, even though we were the only customers in the restaurant. But the vegetable noodles, when they arrived, made up for everything. It was a delicious meal; its reputation is obviously well earned. And we finished it with tea as usual. While we were there, a big, noisy joint family came in and occupied several tables, and seemed to order every non vegetarian dish on the menu, which miraculously took no time at all to appear. Our order had taken a good fifteen minutes. Ah, I guess we were simply out of place.

At the Sonam Trophel. The restaurant had cheerful interiors and excellent food

We decided to walk around, as usual, and headed out towards the Paro dzong. Someone mentioned that it was walk-able, though I wouldn’t advise it unless you have a lot of time on your hands. We weren’t in any hurry, and it being Sunday, the Museum next to the dzong was closed. So our trip was not going to take us long anyway. We walked along the road until we came to a small wooden bridge full of prayer flags. Across the bridge and up a narrow paved path, we were directed to go by an old man hanging around. The walk up wasn’t much but it tired us out, and we had to stop along the way. I was already getting the jitterbugs just thinking about Taktsang.

Asking for directions to the dzong... one of my favourite pictures

The entrance to the Paro dzong, much like the one to the Punakha one, was up a long flight of steep steps. I suppose it was a sort of statement to build dzongs at a height and make people climb up to reach them, as these were seats of power. It was also probably out of security considerations, for the dzongs that we saw (personally or pictures of), were invariably perched on cliffs with only one point of access from the ground. The walls were high revealing nothing of the interior, and painted white, while the window frames were usually combinations of a deep brown and black, interspersed with bands of drawings in earthy shades such as ochres, oranges and reds. The entrance itself wasn’t ornamental, just a pair of huge plain wooden doors, though the long flight of steps did give it that sense of exclusive authority.

This small door was to the right of the entrance to the dzong. Beautiful view of Paro town

View of Paro

Paro dzong is smaller than the one at Punakha, but similar in every other way. Once you step through those huge wooden doors, you are immediately greeted with bright, intricately painted walls. There’s a wealth of stories on those walls which, unfortunately, we could not understand. It has a staggered entry, like in Punakha, in that when you enter you first encounter the aforementioned wall, while the door to the inside is placed to the left, out of sight if you are standing outside the doors, looking in. You enter a courtyard, which is lined on all sides with rooms on the ground and first floors. The colour scheme is the same as the outside, white walls, with wooden door frames, steps and balustrades, all painted a dark brown or black, with bands of earthy shades. In the transition spaces between courtyards, and inside the prayer rooms however, the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with paintings, depicting incidents from the lives of their mythological figures. There were monks here as well. We tried talking to a young boy monk, but he didn’t seem to understand Hindi. This seemed strange, for most locals do. Or maybe not…

The right to life and such matters

2008-08-21T12:03:00.001+05:30

There was this furore sometime ago about Harsh and Niketa Mehta’s right to abort their child. It died down after the miscarriage but left a few questions unanswered. The couple wanted to abort the pregnancy because of medical test reports that showed a high probability of the child being born with a heart defect that would necessitate the use of a pacemaker from an early age, thus effectively ruling out a normal childhood, or indeed a normal life. The couple got to know this in the 24th (if I’m not mistaken) week of pregnancy, way after the 20 weeks deadline that the abortion law in India allows for. This made the Mehtas appeal in court, asking permission to abort the foetus in view of the circumstances. The court asked for a second medical report, and eventually rejected their appeal. Sometime later Niketa had a miscarriage.
That’s the story.
The court’s ruling and the logic behind it, is beyond the scope of this piece. I simply wanted to pen down my thoughts on the matter. And they are really rather simple. The logic against taking away a life is indisputable. However in circumstance such as the one that the Mehtas found themselves in, facing a lifetime of pain at seeing the misery of their child, and the impossibility of a normal life, for both child and parents, it seems to me that an exception could have been made. It’s unfortunate that the Mehtas learnt of the defect after 20 weeks of pregnancy, otherwise there would never have been this controversy in the first place. But in light of the situation, it seems logical to grant their request. I come to this conclusion from the following line of thought: What would I have done in the same situation? Not an easy decision at all. While it seems criminal to take a life, let alone the life of your child, it seems equally unfair to have a child who will surely be chronically ill. One can argue that some defect might have surfaced after the birth, which of course is true. And we all live with that reality anyway. Who’s to say if a medical defect will not show up, or an accident occur and incapacitate a close one at any stage in life. We don’t abandon people then, but to know in advance, even before birth, puts the matter in a different light.
Then again, I am not able to reconcile with the idea, at a humanitarian level, that abortion is okay till 20 weeks, and not after. It’s a legitimate life being taken away, even if it is before 20 weeks, how does a few days here and there make a difference? (Maybe a doctor can shed some light on the logic behind 20 weeks?) And if both acts are equally criminal, and yet one of them is legal, why not make an exception in a special case? One hopes that it’s a well thought out and responsible decision on the part of the parents or mother, as the case may be, in either scenario. It’s a decision that may well have life altering consequences for people. Certainly it’s difficult to imagine that it would rest easy on anybody’s conscience. Of course I also concede that the world is full of all kinds of people, making it essential to have all kinds of laws, but then such people have little regard for the law in the first place. Must be have laws that are designed to bring genuine offenders to book, while ignoring how simple law abiding folk can get affected by it? It’s tricky for sure, for after all, the people writing the laws, defending them and passing judgments based on them, are not always in the clean… have I gone completely off track here??
Anyway, this made me think of another case that had surfaced some years ago, and which was equally controversial, if not more. It was the death sentence for Md Afzal Guru, one of the prime accused behind the attack on Parliament in 2001. This isn’t about Guru, it is about the right to take a life, however heinous the crime committed by a person. In my personal opinion, I am against the death sentence, though of course he deserves the worst punishment possible. I realize that I am probably in a minority, but my argument is not in his favour in anyway, it’s just against playing ‘God’.

Attaboy Mr Ramadoss!

2008-08-09T22:51:00.001+05:30

One of the front page news items in the TOI today took me completely by surprise. I had all but formed an unfavourable opinion of our Union Minister for Health, Mr Ambumani Ramadoss. In the last few years he has caught on my attention several times, but most notably for his stand on two matters.
The first concerns the depiction of smoking in films, which he wanted to remove altogether irrespective of content and suitability to the story, a rather bizarre take on the matter. Needless to say the film community was united in its protest to the idea. (I also remember him publicly advising Shahrukh Khan to give up smoking and to be a more responsible actor, like Aamir, referring apparently to Om Shanti Om as opposed to Taare Zameen Par. Now I am no fan of Shahrukh the actor, but what he does in his personal life is his business. And why make any such comparisons? Aamir has his place in the industry as does Shahrukh as does Govinda as does the last extra dancing behind these leading men. Maybe he should launch a tirade against Govinda’s pelvis thrusts as well? There I might even support him!)
The second was a public spat with the Director of the AIIMS, Dr. P Venugopal. I don’t remember it too well, and in any case it was difficult to react to. Enough details about such cases are often not available in the media, to really form an informed and unbiased opinion, and even if they were, is it really possible to do as much reading and research about every story one reads in the papers? But given the negative light I already saw the honourable Minister in, courtesy his earlier stand, I remember sympathizing with the good doctor who was Mr Ramadoss’ target, and being more than a little pleased when he was reinstated in his position in spite of Mr Ramadoss’ efforts at dislodging him.
But his latest comments about legalizing homosexuality come as a pleasant surprise. Is this the same man talking? It was while addressing a gathering during the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City that Mr Ramadoss spoke about Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes homosexuality, and said that it must be repealed. Such a statement, welcome as it is, is sure to invite public ire, and have long term political consequences.
I hope he sticks to his stand in the face of all that he will surely have to face. For now all I can say is, attaboy!

Lead India: bad billboards, great TVC

2008-06-25T20:26:00.004+05:30

I had written earlier about TOI's Lead India campaign, criticising them for the hoardings they had put up all over Mumbai. In hindsight I don't blame them, in this country right now, everything from cars to paints and chocolates to sanitary pads are being sold by cricketers or Bollywood stars, or occasionally, both. So why not an initiative such as Team India. On the plus side, their TVC is a delight to watch. Here's the link.

Monsoon clouds over Kerala

2008-06-25T20:07:00.006+05:30

Here are some pictures taken while driving through Kerala, just before the monsoons hit. I was there on an assignment and we were travelling from Calicut to Ezhimala. There was no time to stop, so all of these have been shot from the car, while on the move.

Oh so un-fair!

2008-06-25T19:19:00.000+05:30

There is this strange obsession Indians have with fair skin. I should know, I spent most of my growing up years thinking that I was ugly, and feeling somehow inferior to cousins and friends who were fairer. Even now the feeling hasn’t completely left me, I still take compliments with a pinch of salt, but atleast it no longer has anything to do with the colour of my skin.
I don’t know where I picked it up from, for we had no such discrimination in the family. I guess it was, as it still is, the larger perception in society that had fed my insecurities. Sadly this continues to be the case, now more than ever before, and taken to new heights by the aggressive advertising by rival cosmetic companies.
Cosmetic products, like any other consumer products, need to constantly redefine themselves, with better packaging and catchier by lines, even if the basic message remains the same. The most widely selling face product in India are ‘fairness’ creams, products that promise to make you fairer over a period of time. So while this ‘get fair skin’ theme has remained a constant over the years, the advertising for such products has had to come up with new and innovative ideas to emphasise its importance. The latest in this series, currently on air, is the Pond’s White beauty ads (here are links to episode 1 and episode 2).
Now this is not a simple ad. It’s a series of ads, that apparently has a name, the ‘novella’, and a definite storyline. It is episodic, with one episode released every fortnight. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a promo for a film, given its cast, (popular Bollywood actors Saif Ali Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Neha Dhupia) and production value (its very slick, shot like a Karan Johar film) and Pond’s was just riding along. It took me a while to realize it was a short film showing on TV, in small capsules, specifically to advertise a product by Pond’s. Talk about big budget advertising!
The product is a fairness cream that claims it can transform your skin to a ‘pinkish white’ (or a ‘pale white, you choose’.) I am stumped by this claim. Though I must admit I admire the audacity. Can you imagine pinkish white Indians?!
What makes me write this post however, is neither of those two sentiments. It is instead a sense of alarm. The ads are really well done, and the stars are current favourites. Even a skeptic like me can see how well it will be received by the general public. (I would not be surprised if this series is a big hit, and leads to a number of such ‘novellas’ in future.) The implications of such a success are, to my mind, frightening.
Such reckless and irresponsible advertising is nothing new. But irresponsible advertising that is also effective and successful is certainly something to guard against. Question is, how?

Walking around in fading light...

2008-06-24T18:29:00.009+05:30

... on the roads of south Mumbai, rushing from an exhibition to a screening, I couldn't help but stop a few times...

The Mumbai local

2008-05-14T20:39:00.011+05:30

My friends keep asking me why there are no pictures on my blog. A cinematographer, and only writing? I my defense I say, well, I am more than just a cinematographer. But they do have a point, so here goes… a few pictures on one of my favourite things about Mumbai, the local train.

A minor issue

2008-04-27T19:08:00.000+05:30

I had one of ‘those’ arguments with a friend (let’s call him X) yesterday. The kind that I’ve had with myself an umpteen number of times, and in which somehow or another I am not able to defend my stand convincingly, not even with myself.
So here’s how it started. We are on our way back home and take the local train. We decide to stand near the door. The train starts, gives a jerk and starts again to pick up speed. The whole thing is over in a matter of seconds, but for us it is the beginning of a conversation that lasts for most of the 20minute journey.
The jerky start reminded me of a thought I had sometime ago on a similar journey, when I was forced to travel during rush hour. Rush hour traveling in local trains in Mumbai is a nightmare, especially for someone not used to it. Apart from the obvious discomfort of traveling in a train packed beyond capacity, there are the unwritten rules and etiquettes of train travel that separate you from the regular crowd, so that to the seasoned eye you stand out like a sore thumb. I have stopped trying to fight this, I no longer try to blend in. I am an outsider and refuse to be apologetic about it. But that’s a subject for another post.
So on this particular occasion, I was standing near the window, in the space between the seats. This is the best place to be if you are traveling a long distance, because you can stand in one place, and nobody asks you to move right or left or further, and you don’t get jostled around when people behind you try to make their way to the door. However the problem with standing here is that there are no overhead handles to hold on to. So you end up holding onto the grill in the window or maintain balance with a hand flat against the wall. But mostly, and especially if you have a reasonable sense of balance, you end up standing with your feet a little apart. This is what aggravated my problem that day.
What was my problem? My problem was the jerky start. Every time the train started from a station, it started with a jerk and then at least one more before it began a smooth pick up. I might have noticed this before but it stayed at the back of my mind. On that day however, I was forced to think about it at length, because of how I felt every one of those jerks in my knees. On that day, given that I was traveling from Borivali to Churchgate and there are 19 stations along the way, that’s a good 19 times in the space of about an hour. I’m not saying that I have bad knees, or that the jerks were so bad that my knees started hurting. I’m just wondering about the men and women who do this every single day.
Local train is the lifeline of the city of Mumbai, its chief and most convenient mode of transport. I am definitely a fan, and that has as much to do with the efficiency with which it is run, as it is to do with my leaning towards public transport in general. Every day millions of people travel by local trains, to work and back. And they do this for years on end, possibly all their lives. And given how crowded trains are at rush hour, there are about twice or more, people standing as there are sitting. Imagine the number of jerks, however small, an average pair of knees goes through in a day, and then a week, month, year and so on. I’m no expert, but I would imagine it would be doing some amount of damage, especially as one grows older.
How difficult can it be to start a train more smoothly, to be more careful, in the interest of all those passengers? I have a feeling it’s not impossible, it’s just that the drivers have not thought about the damage they might be doing. It’s a matter of expertise for sure, but it’s not an expertise that cannot be developed. It’s just that nobody has pointed out to them that they need to develop it.
And that brought me to my next observation, how is it that something like this has not been looked into? Or has it been, and I don’t know about it, in which case I stand corrected. But of all issues that I have read about concerning public transport in the city, and specifically local trains, while the quality of travel has been discussed, and new trains are being designed, this particular concern has never even been voiced, let alone addressed. Is it that nobody has noticed? Is it that nobody has noticed because we have got accustomed to accepting things as they are, grateful if they are going even half right, and attempting to improve only after something goes drastically wrong? Is it something to do with our very attitude as Indians? Is it related in however indirect a way, to our complacency about all the deaths in accidents related to local trains? If human life can be of such little consequence, surely human comfort has no place in our minds and our busy schedules.
This was pretty much the argument offered by X. He asked me to look around me, at the people traveling with us. Did they care about a measly little jerk? Unlikely, I admit. The average Indian, and certainly the average Mumbaikar, has a thousand other things to worry about. Not to mention the fact that he is perfectly aware of how much worse it can be. After all almost everyone has traveled by State transport buses, on rural roads at some point or another in their lives. Compared to that, the local trains in Mumbai are sheer luxury.
And herein lies my confusion. I know X is right, but I believe, so am I. Just because things could be worse, are indeed, much worse in most of the country, should not mean that it is improved where there is scope for improvement with minimal effort. Just because the common man has learnt to accept his plight with such resignation, and for so long, that something like this doesn’t even occur to him anymore, should the experts continue to ignore these apparently minor issues?
Is the collective damage to millions of pairs of knees every day a minor issue, and thinking about how things can be made more comfortable for them, such a waste of time for officials and experts designing and running our public transport now and in the future?
Was it a waste of time to even have written this post?

Bhutan Diary 10: The Punakha Dzong

2008-04-01T18:37:00.002+05:30

Our next stop was the Punakha dzong. Dzongs are forts that used to be political and administrative centres. Some dzongs still function as government offices, and almost all functional ones also have shrines and monks residing within the premises. The Punakha dzong is beautiful, and this being our first visit to one, we didn’t know what to expect. We were stunned and awed into silence.
Here I shall let the pictures speak. They were not shot for the purpose of this blog, so they’re far from adequate. But they still speak way more than any words of mine possibly can. Suffice to say that we spent way more time here than we intended to, and dropped the idea to travel to the Wangdue Phodrang dzong.
I could however mention one little thing here. In one of the rooms on the first floor, we found a shrine. This is different from the one in the picture. Those were huge idols in a big hall. This was a lot more modest, a room with a shrine, and a monk quietly at work. He was making one of those decorative pieces with multicoloured concentric circles that we had seen in every temple we visited. We were curious about it, but the monk did not seem to speak Hindi or English. In fact he didn’t seem interested in speaking at all. What was really interesting was the material he was using, it seemed like white butter. That’s what made it so soft and easy to mould. He mixed it with colours (don’t know what he used for colours, but I could see coloured sticks lying around) to get the pastel shades. He would squeeze out a small piece from the coloured balls he’d made, and work it into a circle with his fingers. He made several of these in different sizes and colours. And then he put them together one over another in decreasing size. They stuck easily. And then would attach it to the main sculpture he was designing with a toothpick.
I wanted to stay awhile longer, spend sometime by the clear green water, but it was getting late. As I mentioned earlier, drivers in Bhutan don’t like to travel after dark, and sure enough the traffic reduces considerably as the sun goes down. We went back to Punakha town to see if we could find some more passengers to Thimphu. While the driver scouted around, Ramya and I looked for something to eat. But it was too much to ask for a sleepy little town like Punakha. One small restaurant that we found had a fixed menu that they were serving at that hour, and it was non-vegetarian. Being vegetarian really can be a huge disadvantage in some regions.
The driver hadn’t found any passengers, so we left, an uneventful drive back to Thimphu. How I missed Toshi!

Bhutan Diary 9: Punakha-a temple of 'fertility'

2008-04-01T17:22:00.004+05:30

We woke up the next day to a beautiful morning view of Punakha. And no water!
(My lousy net connection no longer lets me upload pictures to blogger. However the pictures can be viewed here, uploaded through the Google uploader for Apple. Love Google. Love Apple. Love Canon (not relevant here, but what the hell!)
The next hour and a half was spent waiting for water, over cups of tea and coffee (I had to switch to coffee, which I felt was a safer choice, after a disastrous cup of tea), and a couple of trips to the kitchen, but mostly hanging around in the pigeon-shit infested balcony. It was a beautiful, peaceful morning, as I suspect most mornings in Punakha are. The air was clear and crisp, and in the distance, in the compound of the local temple, we could see a couple of monk boys fooling around with a hosepipe. They were probably supposed to be watering the plants, but were busy chasing each other. I was a little upset about the water situation, or atleast I wanted to be, but with each passing day I was realizing how difficult it was to be angry in that country, and indeed with its people.
Rather delayed, but well fed with a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, we set out to explore Punakha. Our first stop was Chimi Lhakhang, a small 15th century temple, sitting on a hillock shaped ‘like a woman’s breast’! On the way we crossed this board with posters of election candidates. Bhutan, as you might know, recently became a democracy having held their first ever election last week. This change was ushered in by none other than the King himself, another indication of the sensible, far sighted man he appeared to be. No wonder the Bhutanese dote on their King.
Our driver, this time a Nepali fellow, dropped us at the foot of the hillock at the entrance of a narrow, kachcha path. We walked through a small village and then some fields and soon enough had lost our way, which was strange because we could see the temple and so knew the general direction we were supposed to head in, but it was such a narrow path, that it was easy to get misled. There was nothing to distinguish the paths made by the villagers who worked in the fields, from the one that would have led up to the temple. Ramya realized we were off course, and we retraced our steps until we reached what we thought was the correct way. The walk up could not have taken us more than 35-40 minutes, but city bred, or should I say city spoilt as we are, breathing polluted air, and doing little by way of exercise, we were a little breathless on our way up. But the beauty of the surrounding landscape more than compensated. As we climbed up the small hillock, we realized it was surrounded by hills on all sides, and far in the distance we could see a river, on its leisurely, meandering course, while closer home in another direction was the picturesque little village we had crossed. Between the village and the hillock were stepped fields. And of course the hillsides were dotted with small white houses.
Chimi Lhakhang is a temple dedicated to fertility. It is frequented by childless couples or those who have suffered miscarriages or early deaths of their children. It is believed that the blessings received help in conception and in keeping children safe. A wooden effigy of a Drukpa Kuenley’s male organ is used to bless pilgrims. (This part I read on my way back from the temple, otherwise I would have asked to see it for sure. We weren’t ‘blessed’ with any such thing of course.)
As is usually the case, the most beautiful part of the trip was the journey, in this case, the climb up and down. We spent some time inside the shrine, but were mostly outside, walking all around the temple. While we were there, several other people came visiting, including an Indian couple that looked distinctly Bengali. We had no intention of making any polite conversations, so we steered clear of them. What fascinated me were the Bhutanese women who were walking around with complete ease in their high heels and half kiras. They weren’t exactly walking on paved roads or flat land!
Soon enough we were on our way back. This time we didn’t lose our way. We reached a little early though, our driver who had taken other passengers in order to make a little extra money while we were at Chimi Lhakhang, hadn’t yet returned. So we looked around for tea at the few small shops at the beginning of the path. Strangely enough they didn’t have tea, but a giggly young girl at the first shop offered to make some black tea. ‘No milk,’ she apologized. Ramya was happy with this too.
Then came a memorable experience for me. I wanted to pee. I asked her if I could find a toilet. She giggled some more, and told me I could use theirs. Their ‘toilet’ was a small shack at the side of the house, made with wooden planks, with gaps between the planks, and a couple of positively gaping holes. It stood on top of a pit some six feet deep, with some more planks thrown across. Below I could see the muck, though incredibly it didn’t smell much. What was a bigger source of consternation for me was a boy in the distance who had seen me enter and was looking at the shack for sure. I could see him through the damn gap, could he see me? I wont ever know of course. I took a leak as quickly as I could, and ran.
While Ramya had his tea, I took out my camera, for a beautiful shot that I didn’t get. An old man had come and parked himself on a bench right next to the window of the store, and was playing with a child, while the woman looked on from the window. But as soon as she saw the camera she backed off. No amount of persuasion worked, ‘Not interested,’ she told me emphatically.

Bhutan Diary 8: Onward to Punakha

2008-03-03T01:43:00.005+05:30

We had started walking back already when Ramya mentioned that he would like to learn one of those instruments, and wondered if they would admit an Indian. So back he went to find out details, while I went on to the Bhutan National Bank to make enquiries about the money transfer. This turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase because the bank had closed for transactions by the time I reached, and then I had to see the manager who sits in the corporate office in another building (which was, fortunately, a short walk away) and he was on leave. But I was helped along by the ever friendly Bhutanese, and a phone conversation with the manager later, I had the solution to our financial woes. In the meanwhile, Ramya found out course details, but could not find out whether he would be allowed to join because the RAPA head was away. But he got the email address, and so it seems Ramya might well be back in Bhutan for a longer stay!
Back at Centre Lodge, we picked up our luggage, and headed towards the bus station. We had been told that we could get shared cabs to Punakha for 150/- per person. This is what we thought we would do. As it turned out, cabs to Punakha were not as frequent as we had been given to understand, and the one of two that we found was willing to take us for not less than 250/-. We gave in, and headed off with a friendly couple, whose name I have forgotten. I say name because what I do remember is that they both had the same name. It made me wonder how weird it must be to have the same name, if they were actually married or seeing each other, which seemed to be the case. We also realized why we were being overcharged. We were leaving really late, and most of the journey was going to be in the dark. That is always a risk given Bhutan’s mountainous terrain and hence the higher charge.
The drive was pretty, especially because of the changing light. Punakha is in a valley, at a lower altitude than Thimphu, but to reach it one has to cross mountains that are higher. It got rather chilly on the way, and there was frozen ice by the sides of the mountainface. It was all very thrilling. The high point of the drive however, was undoubtedly the driver, Toshi. He was the most talkative fellow we came across in Bhutan. The man was full of energy, and talked non stop for the three odd hours that it took us to reach Punakha. He was smart, his English, which he spoke with an unrecognizable accent, was better than that of the other drivers we had come across, and he had some attitude! All this made him great company. He spoke about a variety of things, ranging from the behaviour of women in Bhutan (incited by my willingness to sit on the front seat, which I didn’t eventually do, but which met with appreciation from him, for apparently the Bhutanese women didn’t), his family, his work, his many years driving a taxi, and his gradual shift from a hired hand to owning his own car, weather, music, tourists, places to see in Thimphu and in Bhutan, the difficult climb up to the Taktshang monastery, the recent influx of the newly rich call centre young crowd from India, party hotspots in Thimphu, places to get weed… you get the picture. This is apart from the parallel conversation he carried on with the Bhutanese couple, in Bhutanese. To top it all, he was a very safe driver. It certainly was one hell of a drive.
In the middle of all this I got him to promise that he would help us find a decent hotel in Punakha. This he did; although we rejected the first hotel he took us to for the room didn’t have a heater, and I could no longer think of an existence without it. At the second hotel, we heard the word ‘balcony’ being mentioned in the conversation, and Ramya and I smiled at each other. Yes, it had a balcony which looked out to the small town that was Punakha, and the mountains beyond. That settled it for us. I don’t even remember anymore whether we had a heater in the room.
We dumped our luggage and decided to eat at in a different hotel. Mistake. Punakha is tiny and it was the off season. It was only 9 o’clock, and the rather big restaurant that we had crossed on the way, and decided to eat at, was simply not serving food. What is very sweet about the hotels and restaurants in Punakha, as indeed in many others all over Bhutan, is that they are all family run enterprises, with the family often staying in the same premises. What it means is that its common to see a family sitting around a heater and watching television or chatting in the reception. This is what we found in the two hotels and one restaurant we were at in Punakha. It gives a very homely feel to the hotel.
Back to out hotel then, and we requested them to make us some dinner, while Ramya and I tried to guess the young girl’s age. We had met two women and one boy sitting in the reception, and while we waited for the rice and another datsi preparation, this time with spinach, to arrive, we tried to figure out what their relationship might be. I couldn’t tell whether the girl was the boy’s sister or mother, and Ramya thought I was mad. He said she was younger. Obviously I had not taken as good a look at her as he had, for he was right. She was a young, pretty girl called Sonam (again!) and was aware that she shared her name with a Bollywood actress who was being launched in a big budget film called Saawariya. Ah, the reach of good old Bollywood! It was her family that owned the hotel, and the boy was a cousin, a journalist who was working elsewhere but was visiting them for a few days.

In the restaurant

The food was just about edible and the ‘local wine’, which turned out to be the same Bhutanese sake, or rice beer, was worse. But our spirits were high and we had a nice little chat with the boy, who joined us at the table, and offered to drive us around the next day in case we were not able to find a taxi early enough. In fact we were so excited, sleep was a long way off, so we actually ended up having multiple cups of tea.

And I travel by the same trains...

2008-02-26T02:15:00.002+05:30

It was a news item that was both shocking and frustrating. The headline in HT today spoke of a young man who had had an accident at a railway station, and had to wait for over 45 minutes for an ambulance to take him to a hospital.
Before I go further, here are a few facts, all quoted from the same article:
‘The railways do not have a single ambulance available at any of their 103 stations.
There used to be 18 ambulances run by a concerned citizen who himself lost a limb in a rail accident. He withdrew the service after the railways demanded that he pay them parking fees and regularly commandeered his vehicles to go vegetable shopping.
About 25 people are injured and 10 people killed on the suburban railway tracks every day, as a bursting- at- the- seams service struggles to accommodate a third of the city’s 18 million people.’
This, in Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country and a city modeling itself on Shanghai. This is the state of the ‘lifeline’ of the city, the suburban railway. On the one hand the city administration talks of a multi pronged approach to develop Mumbai and turn it into a ‘world class’ city. On the other hand it can’t provide basic amenities to its teeming millions. What is even more shocking is that it is unable to support the efforts of citizens who try to make a contribution. And this is the sort of dichotomy that people seem to have learnt to accept.

What has always struck me as odd is all the hullbaloo that is created about the ‘spirit’ of Mumbai every now and then. When the serial bomb blasts happened in local trains a couple of years ago, everyone was talking about the spirit of the people of Mumbai, who were back on their feet the next day. Well, I ask you, do they have a choice? Everybody has compulsions, responsibilities, jobs to get to, errands to finish, and at the end of the day, families to feed. Not working or taking the day off, are prerogatives of the well to do, not of the common man who travels by train.
What might be more impressive, or perhaps disturbing, is that the people of Mumbai continue to travel by trains, without raising a voice against the conditions under which they travel, and the lack of safety and first aid mechanisms.
At the time of the bomb blasts, the number of deaths was a huge issue. Mumbai had lost many of its hard working, promising citizens to terrorism. What about the hundreds it loses every month to the apathy of its leaders? If we were to do the mathematics, guess who would emerge as the bigger evil.
And yet people have learnt to accept things as they are, because that’s the way they have always been. And because the common man is too busy earning his daily bread. Where does he have the skill or the time to write letters, sit on dharnas or file public interest litigations?
He is content as long as the trains run and he gets a foothold…

Bless One Tree

2008-02-19T14:49:00.001+05:30

This should have come several days ago, but what the hell!
When Chris first told me about the One Tree festival, I was less than enthusiastic, courtesy my pathetically low knowledge of music. But he was thrilled, and his excitement rubbed off on me. Even if it hadn’t I have a feeling he would have dragged me to the festival anyway. Either way, I would be eternally grateful to him.
Thankfully my ignorance does not hamper my ability to appreciate. And that is why I was blown both days, listening to the musical geniuses that are Robert Cray and Jose Feliciano.
Robert Cray has a voice like honey, and is a complete performer. I am told the music he plays is the blues, I couldn’t care less about categorizations and genres. He played the guitar beautifully, and was crooning and whispering to the audience with as much ease as full throated singing. And it was amazing. Chris and his friend Suhel tried to get him to play a number called ‘Don’t you even care’, but he didn’t, possibly we figured, because of a lack of his full band. However to repeated shouts of ‘Don’t you even care’, he replied, ‘Of course I do. I care very much. I’m trying to do my best here.’ The man is such a performer!
Jose Feliciano, who played on the second day, is another whiz with his guitar. He is an interpretative artist, which means he also performs other musicians’ songs. And how! His interpretations, while deriving from the originals, are just so brilliant, some of them sound better than the originals. I knew only a few of the songs that he performed, and I was able to appreciate his genius at reinterpretation for only those. But it made me realize how much I was missing out by not knowing the others. For listening to the ones I did know, performed so differently, blew my mind. His own compositions were good as well, especially the instrumental piece that was inspired by the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, a book that ‘changed his life’.
Maybe I should mention here that Jose is visually impaired, though it’s something that he doesn’t like to play up, so people miss it. Suhel for instance, who knew his music, didn’t know this. Not that it is in the least bit important, he certainly has not let it come in his way.

Bhutan Diary 7: More Coffee, no conversation, some disappointment

2008-02-19T01:27:00.011+05:30

Having realized that we needed to plan our trip a little more than we had earlier realized, we began the next day by a visit to the bus station. This was when the bubble burst for us. There were several things we realized over the course of the hour that we spent there. One, for instance, was that there was indeed only one bus going to Bumthang and it didn’t leave until several days later. Except that we didn’t have several days. We had a very limited stock of cash. There was also the fact that buses in Bhutan usually left early morning, or latest by afternoon, depending on the distance to be covered. It made perfect sense, Bhutan is a mountainous country, ofcourse they prefer to drive during daylight hours. No matter what the length of the journey, even a 12 hour drive would begin at 7 in the morning, rendering meaningless our plans to sightsee by day and travel by night.

The bus station is across this bridge

The buses weren’t very frequent and were usually booked in advance. I could go on, but the gist is that we realized that going to Bumthang was not a possibility anymore. We took down notes about bus timings and went across to the Art Café to discuss the next course of action.

I sulked over this changed scenario for awhile, while a rather amused Ramya shot a million pictures of me in this quiet, unhappy mood, three of which I am posting here. Ramya is like the sea, always calm, atleast at the surface. He might have been upset too, but he didn’t really show it. His response was ‘Well, I’m coming back to Bhutan!’ So a couple of coffees later, I concluded that we had better make the most of the few days we did have, which could not be achieved sulking.

Sulking at the Art Cafe

Back to the hotel, and phone calls to Tsomo at Yamphel and Kuzang, the driver who had taken us to the Changangkha temple. I enquired about making a trip to Punakha. Both suggested a day trip to Punakha, leaving early morning and returning by evening, but given our propensity to rise late, I thought leaving the same day would be a better option. This I discussed with Kuzang, who was nice enough to drop by to talk to me, and brought a thin but excellent guide to Bhutan, published by the Bhutanese government.
We were keen on making our afternoon in Thimphu a productive one, and of the many options listed in the book, we chose the Royal Academy of Performing Arts. This isn’t exactly a tourist spot, but we were very interested in seeing any local performing arts, even if it was only students practicing. A quick lunch at Chopsticks later, we were on our way.
RAPA has four divisions, the Mask dance, Music, Folk dance and Drama. We reached towards closing time, so we only managed to catch a couple of those activities. There were some students playing a local musical instrument and some others dancing in the lawn. It wasn’t the season, and there didn’t seem to be any cultural activities on at the time we were there, but we were told that in the summer, around their festival time, there are a lot of performances all over the country. Of these the mask dance is perhaps the most popular, and best recognized. The masks worn at these occasions can be seen in all handicrafts shops. They are very colourful and feisty. It must be a sight, to see so many of these, and with equally colourful costumes, dancing along the streets.

Bhutan Diary 6: Coffee and conversation in Bhutan

2008-02-18T15:20:00.005+05:30

Back to Norzin Lam, which was feeling more and more like home ground, and we decided to try Khamsa again. We were freezing, and that seemed like a good reason to have a cup of coffee, while enjoying the ‘views over the surrounding mountains’. We reached Khamsa at six, and found two girls there, getting ready to close shop. At six? Unbelievable. It didn’t take much pleading though to convince the giggly girls to serve us coffee.

The book I am bent over is the coffee scrapbook at Khamsa. Its an indoor cafe, but it does have a wonderful view

Check out the kiras that the two are wearing. That coupled with the jacket on top is the most common dress for the women. Stripes and checks are very popular for the kiras, while the jacket is typically of a single colour

Khamsa is located on the top floor of a building called Cham Lam Plaza, and it does indeed have a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains, which at that hour were pitch dark, and dotted with lights. It was a nice enough view at night, and must be prettier by day. The coffee was good too, though I preferred Art Café’s fresh ground. Khamsa had a scrapbook full of coffee trivia, articles on coffee, its history, popularity, types etc and a whole series of cartoon strips. Interesting!
On the ground floor of the same building, we found a shop selling North Face jackets. We walked in to enquire. We were expecting to go to Bumthang and had to pick up warm clothes for the trip. The lady at the counter was most friendly and helpful. She showed us North Face jackets, told us what kind we should pick up for the cold we were likely to encounter and then talked us right out of buying anything… she and Ramya were united in their opinion that we should pick up local stuff from Bumthang. Well, I was all for local wear, so I was delighted by the idea. At this point, I should probably mention my consistent but as yet failed attempts at picking up a half kira for myself. I wanted to get something that was traditional, without burning a hole in my pocket, but it seemed just too much to ask. I hadn’t walked past a shopping street without checking out all the kiras on display, and had stepped in to a few shops, only to be disappointed by either the choice, or the price. We still came away with dirt cheap woolen socks, ‘imported from Bangladesh’. Most things in the shops in Bhutan were imported either from Bangladesh or Thailand, and priced accordingly. I had for instance bought a muffler earlier in the day, which had cost me twice of what four pairs of socks together did. I was also forced by Ramya to buy a hat! It was a very daft thing to do, but then I have to admit it did look sweet, with a bow at the back and what not. I cursed Ramya then and threatened to make him carry it, but I bought it anyway. The helpful lady gave us a discount and a travel magazine, for some articles that she thought we might want to read.
Our next stop was this awesome handicrafts shop that we had passed along the way. We walked in to just look around, and ended up spending a good hour browsing through the things on display, and finding out about the significance of anything that caught our fancy. The shop was playing beautiful music, sung by Ani Choying Dolma. The shop had several cds of her music, and the lady there was nice enough to play several tracks for us. The music was simple, with few instruments as accompaniment, but haunting. It was also perhaps one of the most calming pieces of music I have ever heard. We fell in love with it immediately. But uncertain as we were of our plans, not to mention our finances to carry them through, we didn’t pick up any. That is something I regret to this day. We thought we would at the end of the trip if we had any money left, but as it turned out, when it was time to leave, we didn’t find the opportunity.
On the other hand, we did pick up other stuff. There were these wall pieces, faces of the Buddha and princess Tara, that I just could not tear myself away from. I kept going back to the same ones; it was as if they were telling me, with their calm faces and closed eyes, that they belonged elsewhere. So we left the shop considerably poorer, but very pleased with ourselves.
We decided to eat at Comifers that night, which wasn’t easy to find. We were aided as usual by friendly locals who walked us all the way up to the restaurant, even though it was a very cold evening, and they must have been in a hurry to get someplace warm.
Comifers turned out to be a big, cheerful restaurant. It was made merrier still by a whole bunch of youngsters, almost 30-40 of them, who seemed to be having a party. They had taken up most of the tables at the place, and there were few other customers. But we found a lovely place to sit anyway, a comfortable sofa next to the bar, which we plonked ourselves on. The man behind the counter was friendly and talkative. He had been to India on several occasions and studied in Bangalore, so he seemed to connect with us easily. While chatting with him about our travel plans we realized that traveling by public transport may not be easy, for its not very frequent. Buses to Bumthang for instance run only once a week.
In reply to our enquiries about local liquor, he recommended the Bhutanese sake, and dissuaded us from trying the ‘sonfy’, which he said was the poor man’s alcohol and most unavoidable. They didn’t serve either at Comifers, but he arranged a bottle of sake for us anyway. Sake is rice beer, and best had fresh. The sake that we had that evening was a little too bitter for my taste.

Eating at Comifers. The pictures on the wall are of the King and his son, both very handsome men. The Bhutanese seem to love their king. You will find their pictures everywhere, in shops, restaurants and hotels

The food on the other hand was excellent. He helped us with the order, so I’m not quite sure what we had. I believe it was thukpa and a tofu preparation with vegetables and rice. We were so supremely happy by the end of the meal, we just had to round it off with a coffee, which sadly was Nescafe.

Valentines's Day Mumbai style

2008-02-16T01:24:00.004+05:30

Yesterday my maid walked in in the morning asking me about the situation in the city. Since I have all but stopped watching television news unless something positively drastic has happened (such as for instance, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, which was the last time I switched on the television to see the news.) So I say I shall read the newspaper and tell her. I pick up the paper expecting to see headlines about the violence in the city and Raj Thackery’s latest moves. Instead I see a full page picture of Neha Dhupia sporting a dainty little piece of diamond studded jewellery round her neck. Ah, of course, it's Valentine’s day!
Could things be more ironic?
This whole identity thing has always intrigued me. If our politicians are not dividing us on the basis of religion, as does the BJP and Shiv Sena, or caste, as does the Samajwadi party, its region, as we are witnessing in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharashtra right now. So what makes this sense of identity, this feeling of belonging to a group, so important? Is it just a sense of security, in numbers, for instance? No, certainly it’s more than that. People in a minority are often fervently loyal to their religion, caste or ethnic group, irrespective of what the consequences of such a stand might be. And then there are people who are willing to turn violent, to beat, steal, rape, even murder for what they consider is the cause of their brethren. But surely all these are against what any religion professes. Forget religion, surely it’s against basic human nature?

Bhutan Diary 5: Permit Raj

2008-02-09T04:09:00.000+05:30

It wasn’t my intention that there should be this long a gap between posts, but a long shoot came along, and work after all is work. Gotta make a living…
So I realized that I just about finished writing about the first day in Thimphu, and now so much time has transpired that I’m not sure I will remember all the details of the rest of the trip ☹

Day two began as lazily as usual. Throughout the trip, every single day I would resolve to make the most of the daylight hours, and that necessarily meant that we start the day early. But no matter how hard I tried, which in hindsight was not very hard, this remained a resolve. I like to pack a lot in a day when I am traveling, in an effort to collect as many experiences as I can, but the fact that I didn’t succeed this time around, says something about the laidback Bhutanese spirit, or perhaps the laidback spirit of my travel companion, or both.
At any rate, I gave in.
So we surfaced at nearly ten as usual, and made our way to the nearest travel agency, to figure out how we could make the most of our few days in Bhutan. From the material we had collected, we knew already that we wanted to go to two places for sure, the Taktshang monastery in Paro, and Bumthang, which was supposedly the ‘Switzerland’ of Bhutan. At this point I should mention the two crazy ideas that both Ramya and I had and were fairly excited about, but which we were soon to discard. We wanted to go hiking/ trekking, and spend a few days living in a monastery. The former was impossible because it was not the season, and for lack of time on our hands, and the latter because it is simply not allowed. So much for our spirit of adventure!
I should however clarify that Bhutan is supposedly an excellent trekking destination. Had we been there in the right season, and with time and money to spare, I’m sure we would have been spoilt for trekking options.
Anyhow, we landed up near the National Stupa, at a travel agency called Yangphel. The lady at the counter was most helpful, even though we made it clear from the start that we were not there to take one of their travel plans, but only needed some guidance. Hurrah for the friendly Bhutanese. There was a travel guide who chatted with us and gave us a lot of useful information. The most important discovery for us was that to visit the places that we intended to visit, we needed passes from two different departments, the applications for which were accepted only till noon. It was 11.30am. We hurried from Yamphel to the Tourism office, and filled up the forms for the road permit. Then we split and Ramya went to the hotel to put back our luggage (we had thought we would gather the information that we needed and split from Thimphu, so had checked out), while I went across to the Tourist Permit office for the individual permits for monastries and dzongs.
The Tourist Permit office was good long uphill walk away, and with every step I cursed myself for splitting duties the wrong way. I landed at the office out of breath and in a foul mood, but the friendliness of the chap there got me. Again! I wrote out an application. Even before I had finished, the man asked me a couple of questions and left the room, and returned ten minutes later with the permission letter. He then looked at my application, smiled and added a couple of more names by hand. Ofcourse I couldn’t understand a thing for the letter was in Bhutanese, but I got the impression I had permission to visit more places than I possibly could. He then showed me a book which was an internal documentation by the ministry, and which seemed interesting because it spoke about the history and culture of Bhutan. I flipped through it but realizing that I couldn’t possibly actually read it there, I asked him where I could pick up a copy. Next thing I knew I was walking back with the book tucked under my arm. By this time I was positively in love with the Bhutanese.
Lunch was at the Rice Bowl, another restaurant in the same building as our hotel. This was a recommendation too, but by one of the boys we met at the counter the first night when we had checked into Norling, who told us he was a waiter at rice bowl. We were experimental as usual with our choice of food, and most of it was interesting. A good meal can be such a mood elevator!
I spent some time checking out warm clothes while Ramya went to the Internet cafe. We had bought some in Guwahati, but not enough for a place like Bumthang. We were told it was probably snowing there.
I believe this was the day we went across to the Textile museum to kill time while we waited for the road permit. Its been a while now, and my memory is failing me about our day to day activities… needless to say I haven’t actually written an account of all this anywhere else, and I could kick myself for that!
The textile museum has samples of a lot of different kinds of textiles, most hand woven, from the 1600s to the present day. And ofcourse it talks in detail about the Bhutanese national dresses and how they are worn. There is also a demonstration room where people were busy hand knitting on small traditional wooden looms. I wonder if it can even be called a loom, it was just a wooden apparatus propped up by the women using their legs, while they sat on the floor. There seemed to be hundreds of threads stretched across and it seemed a miracle they were not all hopelessly entangled.
There was also a video room showing a short film about weaving, but the television had such a bad picture that we gave it a miss.
We collected our road pass a little after 3. With little time left before sundown, we decided our best bet was to visit someplace closeby. We chose to go to Changangkha temple. The taxi driver who drove us to the temple was friendly and seemed knowledgeable, so we took his number.

Described as one of the oldest temples in the Thimphu valley, it is dedicated to Avalokiteshwara, the Buddhist lord of compassion. The temple is on higher ground, and therefore offers beautiful views of the valley. We had to climb a flight of steps to reach the temple, and as in most Buddhist temples in Bhutan, the first thing we encountered was the prayer wheels.

Inside the temple compound were two small rooms filled with lit and unlit diyas. The main shrine was inside a bigger room on the other end of the courtyard. This temple, like a lot of others we visited in the days to come, had a side entrance. The main shrine is typically inside another room, or at the centre of one wall, and directly opposite this is a seat, with a low table in front, with some texts kept on it. This seat I assume must belong to the temple’s chief priest. The Bhutanese visiting the temple were bowing down in front of this seat too, just as they were in front of the deity. We never saw anyone actually seated on one of these, but these seats were in all temples. Perhaps they were used only on special occasions or during daily prayers, but we never had an opportunity to attend any. At any rate, it explains the side entrance. Photography was not allowed inside the temple, so there are no pictures of the inside.

The deities inside were beautiful as usual, and the temple colorful, with paintings on the walls, and the silk cloth hangings. These were made of metal though, unlike the Zangdopelri. Irrespective of the material used, the faces of the deities were always colored golden. In this case that wasn’t required, for they seemed to be made of a brass kind of material anyway. The Bhutanese have a peculiar practice, they offer just about anything in the temples. We were most amused to see packets of biscuits and chips lying as offerings. The other thing we found in this temple, and subsequently in all others were bowls full of water, typically five in number but sometimes more. Also to be found are little sculptural arrangements of lots of concentric circles, in white and pastel colours. More on this later, for after a few days, we ran into a monk making these. A peculiar thing about this particular temple was that I was not allowed to enter the shrine room. Apparently women are not allowed inside.
I did the customary turning of prayer wheels, and was marveling at the view of the valley, when Ramya disappeared down the steps. I followed soon after, only to realize that I had lost him. I went back up and found a path breaking away from the way to the temple, and leading to a small structure. From behind this structure I could hear voices and the sound of someone strumming a guitar. It was a pleasant enough tune, and I was curious to see who was playing it. It was a bunch of young boys, who promptly broke into ‘kuchh kuchh hota hai’ as soon as they saw me. One of them walked up and started apologizing for the rest. Ramya was there too, and after hanging around there for awhile, we made our way back. On the way, Ramya and I got chatting about the boys, and he asked me if I had noticed the cans of paint lying around, which indeed I had, and I had wondered what they were for. Apparently we had run into a bunch of junkies!

Bhutan Diary 4: Coffee and conversation in Thimphu

2008-02-03T01:47:00.000+05:30

On the way back we decided to drop in to the Art Café, another recommendation from the printout. This is tucked away in a corner, next to the Swiss Bakery, and even though we were in the right place, it still took us a little while to find it. But was it worth it! It’s a cosy little coffee shop, with a coal heater and great filter coffee. Needless to say we fell in love with it immediately. Sadly it stays open only till 7pm. Obviously the coffee shop culture has not arrived in Thimphu yet. But I did find it strange that a coffee shop should stay open only in the business hours of 9am to 7pm. How do they ever manage to do any business?

A little while later, this guy who I had spotted at several places, starting with the Siliguri bus station, and later Phuntsholing, walked in with his camera bag. I decided it was time to say hello. He was Darshan, an architect from Ahmedabad. He was accompanied by a couple of pretty Bhutanese girls, both of them called Sonam. Both Sonams were very friendly and talkative. We spent some time chatting over coffee. The Art Café was their local hangout, and apparently it serves some great soups and sandwiches. We weren’t hungry, so didn’t try any.

Next on our agenda was a visit to the National Stupa. Our printouts informed us that we if we visited it in the evening, we would come across Bhutanese doing their evening prayers. We asked the two Sonams at Art Café about it, but they seemed unimpressed. To them it was just a stupa, which people visited, mostly old people, and they had not heard of any evening prayers. We decided to go anyway, much to the amusement of the two Sonams. They thought we were the religious variety. Nothing could be further from the truth. But we certainly were interested in observing if not actively exploring, the local culture. The Sonams were so familiar in a way. They were just like the millions of young Indians, dismissive of their indigenous culture, and proud of their English speaking capabilities. This atleast was my first impression, and I do hope I was wrong.
We walked to the National Stupa, and I must admit, I can understand their lack of enthusiasm. The Stupa is well, a stupa. Not much more to write about it. It seemed to have a temple, but the doors were closed, so we couldn’t actually see it. There were a lot of people around, and most of them were hurriedly making rounds of the Stupa, while chanting under their breaths. And admittedly, a lot of them were old. In fact, I got the feeling that a lot of them were on their way back home from work, and were dropping into the Stupa for a quick prayer. Part of the charm of the place is lost because of the construction going on around it. So there was a lot of scaffolding and other construction material lying around. Anyway, we played copycat and made a round of the Stupa, though with our leisurely pace, we couldn’t be more unlike the Bhutanese.
On the way back, we lost our way, and it turned out to be a longer walk than we had intended. It was getting colder and I was thankful for my monkey cap. We dropped in at Khamsa Coffee at the Cham Lam Plaza, another recommendation from the printouts, hoping for a hot cuppa while enjoying ‘the view over the surrounding mountains’, but this was not to be. It was closed, what is it with these coffee shops in Thimphu?
Back to the room in Centre Lodge, and a hot suja later, we were ready for dinner. We went across to Hotel Tandin, another recommendation from the printouts, and had a ‘wine cooler’ while we mulled over what to eat. The ‘wine cooler’ is an artificially flavoured drink that has absolutely no connection with the beverage it borrows its name from. It comes in a variety of flavours and colours. I don’t recall which one we tried, but I have a feeling they will all be equally bad. Tandin seemed to us a place for Indian food. The menu was primarily Indian, and that’s what everyone seemed to be having. So we decided to try MK instead, which claimed to serve Japanese food.

Mk is a more modest place (apologies for no pictures) on the first floor in a building just behind the cinema hall. The menu is displayed on a blackboard, in Japanese. Some had an accompanying explanation in English, but most dishes were written in Japanese. Hell, I really regret not having taken pictures! Anyway, the friendly lady who came to take the order recommended to us a soup, a dish of fried tofu with vegetables and cheese momos. Of course all these had Japanese names, and I could kick myself for not having written them down. The food was interesting, as always. My pick would be the dumplings which had a filling of cheese and some green leaf, possibly spinach.
That was our first day in Thimphu.

Bhutan Diary 3: Thimphu, the capital with no traffic light

2008-01-08T19:57:00.000+05:30

The drive to Thimphu from Phuntsholing is about 5-6 hours. It was COLD in Thimphu. We checked into Norling Hotel on the main street in the downtown Thimphu, Norzim Lam. The first couple of hours in Thimphu were spent getting used to the cold- a hot water shower followed by tea while sitting in front of the hot blower.
We started the next day by scouting around for a different hotel, for we weren’t entirely happy with Norling. A friendly man on the street just outside Norling (I can’t even remember how we got chatting!) suggested Centre Lodge to us. Centre Lodge (00975-2-334331/2) is a small hotel with just about 10-12 rooms, in the building next to the Cinema hall. It’s clean and lovely, but it really was the view that settled it for us. We grabbed it. It’s small and new, so don’t expect great service. The food comes from two restaurants downstairs, both of which are excellent, but both don’t open before 8. The reception is manned by two people, Suraj (00975-17687022), who has been to Mumbai and actually knows his Andheri from his Goregaon, and thinks Thimphu is expensive in comparison, and a girl called Sangeeta who always looks impeccable with her eye liner and dark lipstick in place and takes two steps at a time when climbing stairs.

Bhutan Diary 3: Thimphu, the capital city with no traffic lights

Next we went for a walk on Norzin Lam. By now we had read all the material we had on Bhutan and decided on the places that we might want to visit. In the process we had also realized that the trip might be longer than we had earlier anticipated, that we would miss Lensight for sure, and that we would run out of money. So in we walked into the Bank of Bhutan. We met the manager, who was sitting with the manager of a rival bank, the Bhutan National Bank, and we explained our problem. They both thought there could be ways around it, the faster one being through the BNB. Apparently BNB has an account with the Axis Bank. He asked us to get someone to deposit money into that account, with a letter stating who it’s for, including an identification such as a PANcard number, and then fax the letter to BNB. And voila we could then withdraw the money from BNB. We didn’t actually need to do this, but I wrote about it anyway because it highlights exactly how impromptu our trip had been, and therefore how ill prepared we were. But I guess ways open up when you really want something and are creative and optimistic about finding solutions.
The Norzin Lam seems to be the main street in Thimphu. A lot of hotels, shops and government offices are located on it. Typically the ground floor houses the shops, while the upper floors have the hotels and restaurants. There’s a lot of car traffic on this road. I believe it’s the busiest road, and the only one in Thimphu that needs a traffic controller, who stands at the one circle from which everything seems to radiate out.
The people mostly wear traditional costumes. The men wear the gho, which is a knee length robe, while the women wear the ankle length kira. We didn’t see many women wearing the full kira though the half kira, which is like an ankle length wraparound worn differently, is very common. The full kira is a lot more complicated, and requires some amount of traditional jewellery as well to hold the garment together at the shoulders. The women top it with a kind of jacket. Both the men and the women looked most elegant in the their traditional dresses, though I did feel a little sorry for the men because it was so cold. To fight the cold they all wore socks rolled right up to their knees.
Checks seems to be the favoured pattern for both men and women, as also the traditional one, as I was informed when I tried to buy a half kira. There are some patterns and motifs which are traditional and therefore more common, although these days, almost anything goes. The cheapest half kira will cost about 350-400 rupees, and that too at the local market. At regular shops, the prices start at 450. But there is no limit to how high the price can go. There is a tradition of hand weaving in Bhutan, and hand woven kiras, with simple but elegant patterns to intricately complicated ones, in monotones to absolute riots of colour, are all available, if you can afford it. We saw kiras that cost 50-60 thousand.
Our first stop that day was the Handicrafts Museum. Our printouts informed us that they had a good collection of books, and we wanted to pick up something about Bhutanese history and culture. We spent a good couple of hours there browsing through books, and taking an occasional break to look at the other displays. They had some very interesting masks on display. Another thing that caught my eye was this blue stone that was a part of a whole lot of jewellery. There must be a significance to it. We both bought one book each, and some other small knick knacks that we couldn’t help picking up.
By this time we were famished. Lunch was at Chopsticks, a restaurant in the same building as our hotel, and a place which we would visit often over the next few days. It was an amazing lunch of Chinese food, thukpa and sizzler if I’m not mistaken. At any rate, the food here didn’t disappoint, and I loved their suja.
The next stop that day was the Zangdopelri temple. Distances in the town centre are not much, and we spent a lot of our time in Thimphu on foot. That might also have been because neither of us was in a hurry to do anything, and we enjoyed walking around, savouring the place, taking in the sights and sounds, entering shops, especially book and coffee shops and striking up conversations with the locals whenever we could.
So we checked our printouts, asked for directions, and strolled across to the Zangdopelri. This is a relatively new temple, built in the 1960s. What attracted us to it was the fact that it is supposed to be constructed on a former battle site, in order to ‘pacify energies’. It doesn’t look interesting at all from the outside, but step in for a surprise. It has some very impressive murals. The Bhutanese temples and dzongs (forts) always had the most elaborate multicoloured wall murals. They all also had wall hangings of expensive looking silk cloth, also in many colours. In the Zangdopelri, I couldn’t see an inch of empty wall space. There were many idols there, and ofcourse we didn’t then know whose they were. We later got to know that Bhutanese worship the Padmasambhava, called Guru Rinpoche (the precious teacher) by the Bhutanese, the reincarnation of the Lord Buddha, who manifested himself in eight forms. Most temples have idols of one or the other of those eight forms. There was a wealth of stories in the paintings on the walls which we understood nothing of, but were still awed by. I have to let the pictures speak the rest, no amount of writing, none that I am capable of certainly, can quite describe it anyway.
The Bhutanese have this typical way of offering their prayers, in which they fold their hands high above their heads, bring them down still folded, kneel on the ground, and go prostrate and fold their hands again, then get up and repeat the whole procedure. This is typically done three times. In the Zangdopelri we found a woman who kept doing this the entire time we were there. She had some stones with which she was keeping count. So everytime she was prostrate with her hands folded, she would move one stone from one pile to another. Ramya observed this for awhile and told me it wasn’t just a simple moving of one stone from one pile to another, but something more complicated. She was moving stones, but in some strange pattern that we couldn’t figure out. I couldn’t help but admire the muscles on her arms. Well, what do you expect, with all those near-push-ups?

Bhutan Diary 2: Phuntsholing to Thimphu

2008-01-06T02:49:00.000+05:30

The route to Thimphu is completely mountainous, and our taxi driver, Sonam drove like crazy as long as there was light, ignoring our pleas for tea. He finally stopped at 5:30 at a small restaurant where he had momos, and we had that life saving liquid called chai. He wanted us to have dinner as well, but dinner at 5:30? Only after we positively implored did he agree to make another stop later.
Every small and big restaurant in Bhutan seems to serve liquor. The route to Thimphu is dotted with restaurant-and-bars, as is every other place in Bhutan. It was getting to be really cold by this time. Every time Ramya opened the window for a smoke, we could feel the icy cold winds. Sonam said that it was going to be much colder in Thimphu, though it hadn’t snowed yet. ‘Shit’, I thought, ‘it snows in Thimphu’, followed by ‘whippee, it snows in Thimphu’.

We stopped at a sweet little place called Damview for dinner. I spent most of my time sitting next to this big heater, sipping hot suja, butter tea. We had some more delicious Bhutanese food, served to us by a giggling 16 year old girl called Ganga. She must have taken a liking to us, for she showed us the view of the valley from an adjoining room.
The pictures: (1) Ramya having dinner at Damview, (2) me warming my hands at the heater and (3) our driver Sonam (left) and the giggly Ganga (right)

(To be contd)

Bhutan Diary 1

2008-01-06T00:25:00.000+05:30

One of the first things we noticed was the friendliness of the people. We needed directions to the hotel we were headed towards. The first man I asked was friendly enough, giving elaborate instructions. The next one actually walked us to the entrance to the street on which the hotel was located. Agreed it wasn’t far, but we were still impressed. And then it was the politeness and friendliness with which they would respond and try to be helpful. It was heartwarming. It led to Ramya’s second one liner, ‘I want Bhutanese citizenship.’
The hotel (Bhutan Hotel) was clean and cosy, the staff pleasant and friendly (again!) and reasonably priced. One of the men at the reception was particularly friendly and his English was excellent. His Bengali sounded equally good too. Bengali?! ‘I studied in India, in Siliguri. You have to learn Bengali when you are surrounded by Bengalis’, pat came the reply. He told me we would need our voter IDs or passports to get travel permits in Bhutan. We weren’t carrying either. We were carrying our PAN cards, and hoped they would suffice. The man wasn’t so sure.
We did, after all, sleep in Bhutan that night.
Dinner on the other hand, was another matter. By the time we freshened up and stepped out for dinner at about 9:15, everything seemed to have come to a standstill. The streets that were bustling with activity a while ago were now deserted, and we couldn’t find any restaurants open. The only one we did find had this to offer when we asked about vegetarian food, ‘chicken rice, beef rice, pork rice…’ We found one small place open though, on the Indian side, that did serve vegetarian food and with hot chapattis too. Wonderful! The food was decent, and accompanied by a Govinda film playing on TV, to an avid audience of several men. Ramya and I played a game of ‘guess the heroine’. He was sitting with his back towards the screen and trying to guess the identity of the actress from her voice. He didn’t succeed. I don’t blame him. I was looking at the screen and thought it was Farah, from the voice. It was only when a close up shot appeared could I finally tell that it was Madhavi. Oh well.
I did wonder at one point about these films from the 80s, and their strange sensibility. Ramya on the other hand said he quite enjoyed watching them as did millions of other Indians. As if to prove his point, one man at the restaurant told us he had seen the film a good twenty times already. Well, well.
The next morning I went for a walk, and had chai at the tapri from the previous evening. There were mostly men there, crowding around the tapri, and a lone woman having chai by the roadside all by herself did attract a few stares. There are absolutely no roadside chai shops in Bhutan, what a pity. Though all restaurants do serve tea. A short walk into Phuntsholing and I was at the bus station. The last bus for Thimphu is at 1:30, but there is also the option of taking a shared cab.
A little while later we were at the Bhutan tourism office trying to get our travel permits. The man at the hotel had been right ofcourse, they don’t accept PANcards. Will our trip to Bhutan be so shortlived? We weren’t willing to give up yet, so we asked if they would accept it if we got permission from the Indian immigration office (a suggestion from the friendly guy at the Bhutan hotel reception the previous night.) Yes, they would. A glimmer of hope.
On the way to the Indian immigration office, I came up with another idea. Perhaps we could call our respective families and get them to fax copies of our Voter IDs/ passports. Except that Ramya has neither. Not even a ration card. What the hell! I cursed him a bit, and reassured myself that we would find a way out of the situation yet.
As it turned out, it was a cakewalk. The guy at the Indian immigration office didn’t blink once, just asked for photostat copies of out PANcards, which we went out and got. Ofcourse Phuntsholing is a small place and you don’t exactly find photostat shops at every street corner. So when he decided to be a jerk, and sent us back for a Photostat of my driving license as well, for God-alone-knows-what purpose, I was all but ready to blow my fuse. Ramya sensed that I think, for he offered to go back for the extra photostat. After that it was quick. It helped that the man was from Delhi. Oh lord, these regionalisms amongst Indians.
Incredibly, Ramya later apologized for having stopped me from giving that man a piece of my mind. He thought it was justified and he should have let me. I thought his intervention saved us time and a lot of trouble. The man did our job, he could have held us up. This also led to a small discussion how this man managed to retain his unpleasant and unfriendly nature even when living in this beautiful, noise, traffic and pollution free little town, in the midst of the happy, friendly Bhutanese.
Back to the Bhutan tourism office. The man behind the counter there was amazing. He kept asking people to stand in a queue, and not crowd around the person whose picture was being shot. Ofcourse, Indians being Indians, there would always be some among the crowd who wouldn’t listen. So at some point he lost his temper, which is to say he spoke louder and commanded instead of requesting, and then promptly apologized. ‘You people don’t listen, you make me speak like this. I don’t like it.’ Adorable.
Next was a visit to the netcafe for Ramya and a temple for me, from where I called mom and loaded film into my camera. Our first Bhutanese lunch was at a restaurant called Capital (I think.) We started with trying out the local liquor, a shot of whisky for Ramya and gin and lime for me. I don’t remember another occasion when I drank at 12 in the afternoon but it wasn’t bad at all. For lunch we had kewa datsi, a preparation with cheese, chilli and mushrooms, and a curry with egg, I forget the name. Interesting, this datsi business. The ema datsi is the national dish of Bhutan, and made with chilli in cheese curry. That’s it, its just juicy big, green chillies, in cheese and salt and water! Made well, it tastes great. The chillies aren’t all that hot at all. Variants of this are kewa datsi and shamu datsi, made by adding potatoes or mushrooms to the same basic ingredients. Everywhere we went these are the options we got for Bhutanese vegetarian food. There really isn’t much choice for vegetarians.
By two we were armed with our permits but the last bus had left. We didn’t find any others going towards Thimphu either, so we ended up shelling out 1400/- as cab fare. We tried to pick up books or literature on Bhutan or Buddhism, as we had in Siliguri, but found nothing.

(To be contd)

A travel tale from 2007

2008-01-05T01:58:00.000+05:30

It seems coincidental, but also somehow appropriate that I should have been talking about happiness quotient in my last entry before I left for a shoot on Dec 9, and visited the land of the highest happiness index right afterwards. Or maybe, as I have always believed, there is nothing like a coincidence…
So it was that I found myself in Assam, on a documentary shoot, and decided the shoot absolutely had to be followed up with some travel. You don’t travel all the way to a place like Assam, to only work. Its simply not done.

Assam

To begin with, I scouted around for company. I’ve never traveled alone (though I have a feeling that too is about to happen, like a number of other firsts in the recent past), and somehow didn’t relish the idea. I didn’t have to look far. A colleague and friend Ramesh, who was sound recordist on the same shoot, was more than enthusiastic. In fact, he had similar plans. Next we scouted around for potential destinations. I haven’t explored the North East, and therefore the choices were many. Assam itself had enough to offer, and then there was Arunachal, Nagaland, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Manipur… we could take our pick. And then we realized how close Bhutan was. That settled it for us.
Thus it was that we landed in this tiny Himlayan kingdom-nation, of a small population and high happiness quotient.

The journey to Bhutan was interesting enough. We were in Duburi district in Assam when some tribal groups called for a 1000 hour bandh. (I don’t remember the name of the organization, a pathetic reminder of how far removed we all are, or atleast I am, from the goings-on of the North east. Its truly shameful and I have no excuses to offer for my ignorance. Perhaps this subject warrants a separate entry.)
To avoid the bandh we started at 3 in the morning for Guwahati. Even though we were close enough to Bhutan in Duburi itself, information about how and where we should go was hard to come by. Helpful locals told us where we could cross the border from, but what then? We didn’t just want to cross the border. We wanted to go someplace, we just didn’t know what or where that might be. Internet connections were pathetically slow. All our attempts at sourcing information from the Net resulted in more or less the same few facts rehashed by various different websites. Finally we decided we had no choice but to return to Guwahati, and take a safer, if also long and circuitous, route to Bhutan.
So we spent a day in Guwahati surfing the net, finding out bus and train timings and finally rushing to the railway booking centre to book tickets to New Jalpaiguri in an overnight train. Miraculously we got tickets, for the same day, inspite of the ‘no availability’ that the website seemed to be professing. Moral of the story: in India, there’s always a catch, whether or not you know it, or are in a position to find it.
The rest of the evening was spent in preparing for the bitter cold we would find in Bhutan. We looked for thermal inner wear, and Ramya managed to find Jockey for himself soon enough. However, for some strange reason, shopkeepers in Guwahati seem to think that women don’t need branded thermal innerwear. Or atleast not of the Jockey variety. We also picked up monkey caps, something I haven’t ever actually seen anyone wear as monkey caps. Neither would we, though we used the caps extensively. If you’re wondering at the choice of monkey caps in particular, well, try finding a headgear warm and decent, without flowers or fake nike logos or badly imitated Che Guereva staring down at you, in Paltan Bazar in Guwahati, on a Sunday at 7 in the evening.
New Jalpaiguri is the train station nearest to Siliguri, a town that is the door to several North eastern states, as well as Bhutan. We landed there the next morning, a good two hours late, and headed straight for the bus station. After waiting at the Bhutan counter for two hours we were informed that the afternoon bus for Phuntsholing wouldn’t leave that day, owing to the strike. Apparently the 42 day strike had been called off, but another one called in its place. Thankfully this one was just a day long strike, and apparently it was our destiny to be hit by a strike after all. Gloomily Ramya and I roamed around Siliguri. We went to a monastery there and a school for Buddhist studies.
(An aside: walking around the monastery, in the lookout for some information about it, we came across a monk. We tried asking him what time the prayers happen, and if there were going to be any in the evening. We got a half hearted response from him, which prompted the first of Ramya’s one-liners, ‘this guy certainly hasn’t imbibed Buddhist values. He has a long way to go to monk-hood.’)
At the school for Buddhist studies we walked into a prayer class. There was a whole bunch of young monks, the youngest not more than 8 years or so, chanting various hymns. They were led by some older ones, and every once in awhile someone would play a wind instrument or strike a hanging drum. Another older monk was distributing sheets of hymns. The students had differing levels of concentration, some fidgeting in their seats, others rocking back and forth, and one actually yawned. I have attended a prayer session many years ago in a monastery in Ladakh, and it’s all very ordered. This was so different and equally fascinating. They all had cups and glasses, no two alike, in front of them. At one point a couple of monk-boys came in with big flasks which they held with a corner of their robes, and poured a hot liquid into them. We got two cups too, of the thin white liquid. It tasted like sweetened milk, diluted with water. I have had only cow and buffalo milk, and this was neither. Ramya left his after a couple of sips. I tried to be brave, but gave up halfway through the cup.
After awhile we decided to go back to the bus station, and began to explore the possibility of going to Phuntsholing by taxi and to look for other passengers to share the fare with. We so desperately wanted to sleep in Bhutan that night. Just then voila, Ramya heard a man yelling ‘Jaigaon’. (Jaigaon is the town to the Indian side of the border with Phuntsholing.) Yippee, we’re on our way.
Its about three and a half to four hours to Bhutan by bus, depending on the traffic on the highway, and the number of stops it makes on the way. On the way, Ramya got off once for a smoke and returned grinning and showing off an unfamiliar note, Bhutanese currency! In the towns close to the border, Bhutanese currency is accepted, almost common.
Jaigaon and Phuntsholing lie side by side, the border separating them, and a huge gate called the Bhutan gate providing the point of exchange of traffic. The passage between these two is free. Its quite a sight, and we both found it most delightful. We had multiple cups of tea at a tapri on the Indian side, next to the Bhutan gate, watching the steady stream of vehicles and people going to and fro. I was grinning foolishly the entire time.

(To be contd)

Unhappy New Year

2008-01-02T23:22:00.000+05:30

On the 31st evening I nearly scolded my friend X for what I thought was an overdose of concern and protectiveness towards his girl friend. Two days later I am most distressed to note that I’m ready to eat my words.
He had got a last minute call from this girl he adores, and he had to make plans for the evening. So there we were discussing at 6 on the evening of the 31st what his options were. One of these, which both of us thought was an excellent idea, was to go across to Pune, a lovely city and a favourite with many of my friends. Only he felt it was too late already, and if they tried doing that they might well end up spending midnight crossover to the new year in the bus on the highway. So I suggested that to be faster he should take a cool cab instead. His immediate reaction was ‘no way, they are too unsafe for a woman’. I pointed out to him that he would be with her, but he was adamant that it was not safe, and that in the event of any untoward incident on the way, there was little he alone would be able to do to help. I was a little miffed at this restriction that all of us have had to impose on ourselves at some point in our lives. Having grown up in Delhi, I have done that more times than I care to recall, or yet I have never grown used to it. This curb on my freedom inspires an unnaturally strong opposition in me and mixed feelings of anger, helplessness and frustration. This was what I felt yet again as I was having this conversation with X. I mean, this was Mumbai, this city is different.
Apparently not.
The cover story in today’s HT is how a mob ushered in 2008, for themselves and for a couple of young women, for whom the first two hours of 2008 will be unforgettable forever.
It was mobocracy once again.
My apologies to X, he was right. I’m sure he would never want his girl to be caught in a situation like that, and one can hardly blame him for finding the sacrifice of giving up on a romantic trip to Pune preferable to taking the risk.

An aside: If there’s anything to rival my feelings from the conversation a couple of days ago, it was what I felt looking at the pictures in the paper this morning.
Over the years I have realized that while anger and frustration are bad enough, its helplessness which kills me. What can one do except feel indignant at reading reports such as these. There has to be something, I haven’t yet figured out what.

The Mumbai Project

2007-12-08T16:56:00.001+05:30

For the last fortnight or so, the Hindustan Times has been running a series of articles called the ‘Mumbai Project’. Here’s an introduction to the series, as it appears on their website:
‘Mumbai is booming. Mumbai is crumbling. With our new aspirations, new money and new confidence, we feel — we know — that we can take on the world. Yet, as Mumbai pursues a great global dream, the reality is that it is a third-world city. So, we now roam the farthest corners of the globe, and are shocked when we return to traffic snarls, potholes and the tensions of daily life.
HT believes we live in a time of hope — and great change. So, it's time to hope, certainly, that we can transform our city. It's also time to understand the change that is upon us. Did you know we are the process of spending Rs 43,000 crore to transform Mumbai? New flyovers. New trains. New taxis. New pavements. New roads. New drains. That's just the start. Where the money's going? Can we do better? How do we make sure we have the best in the world? It's time to begin the first real public dialogue for the new Mumbai.’
I believe, as much as HT does, that we live in a time of hope and great change. And while our cities need transformations, maybe even complete makeovers, to cope with all the additional pressures, there is an equally pressing need to go back to the source of the problem, and try to contain and prevent a further spread of it.
Most of the city’s problems stem from the fact that its infrastructure can no longer cope with its huge, and rapidly increasing population. Add to this the booming economy and its rewards, and it isn’t merely a problem of numbers, but one of a population that now has higher disposable incomes than ever before and an eager, enterprising market, keen to show them exactly how to spend it.

So this is the scenario. We have a city of 14 million and growing. We have an infrastructure that is crumbling.
The source of the biggest problem that Mumbai faces today is also its biggest resource: its teeming millions. And what is bringing these millions to the city, every day, day after day? The promise of jobs, the dream of making it big, of having a better life for themselves and their families back home. And are there really that many jobs in the city? Certainly there are, because it’s the economic capital of the country, a huge number of industrial and business houses have their head offices and branches here, and more than anything else, its a growing city, which in turn means that there is always a further creation of jobs happening simultaneously.
This is what they call a vicious circle, and someone’s got to realize it and break it. (And that doesn’t just mean creating a New Bombay. I have driven through some parts of New Bombay and it is the most repetitive and characterless township I have seen.)
In fact the story of Mumbai is not very different from the stories of the other metros. They are all suffering from massive urban migration leading to a shortage in infrastructure, further leading to related problems such as traffic snarls, overcrowded local transport, airports struggling to manage the massive traffic, electricity and water shortages, lack of proper maintenance of public utilities and so on and so forth. These have been researched thoroughly and discussed by the HT team of journalists in their articles over the last few days. (HT story)
So what is it that I am trying to say? Nothing new or innovative, as it happens, but something so blatantly obvious…
What Mumbai, and other Indian metros need, is not just a makeover.
What they need is a breather.
It’s in the interest of the whole country and not just the big metros that we look at developing our small towns as centers of trade and industry, and create enough opportunities for jobs and a standard of living that is appealing enough for a sort of reverse migration to take place. Equally importantly, we need far reaching reforms in the agriculture sector (I wonder when HT will do an equally in depth series on the Rural Agriculture Project?) so news like farmer suicides can become a thing of the past.
An interesting tool/ phenomenon (and one used frequently in the current series by HT) is our tendency to look towards other countries and cities, and emulate their example. While it is good practice to learn from other’s successes, it is equally important to study the same examples for possible flaws, and feasibility studies when the model is applied in the local context and culture, and to inform the public of the results. May we remind ourselves that the very cities we are talking about are the ones with huge ecological footprints that are unsustainable in the long run.
To take an example, a higher FSI is touted as the solution to Mumbai’s space crunch. Needless to say, it is a solution. Possibly the only solution, given the current situation. But is it necessarily a happy solution? The people residing in the high rises close to even higher-rise office buildings, are surrounded by an artificially created environment all day. They would most certainly have a higher standard of living (indeed they would need to, to be able to afford a high rise in Mumbai), but will they also necessarily have a better ‘quality of life’? Can we have studies comparing the health and happiness quotient of people residing in low and high rises in a city, given that all other factors be more or less equal? I don’t need to even say what the results of such a study would be. And yet we all know that there is no escaping high rises as a solution in the current scenario. But can we afford to ignore the merits of the alternative? And should we not try to preserve, as much as possible, the horizontal and organic character of our cities, and in turn the (relative) mental well being of its inhabitants?
This again is not possible if we let the same cities become hubs of every kind of activity. That brings me back to the point I made earlier. We have no choice but to develop smaller towns, and in a way that is efficient and sustainable.
To be fair, its not like it hasn’t started already. Infosys, headquartered in Bangalore, another city bursting at its seems, has now a mini township in the smaller neighbouring town of Mysore. We've already been shown a way. We need to study and built upon the experience.

A lucky generation

2007-12-08T12:01:00.000+05:30

Many years ago, when I was in high school, 9th standard or so, a History teacher made a remark in class that has remained with me to this day. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and she was trying to explain to us young minds the importance of the occurrence. While its significance was not lost on any of us considering all the media coverage it was getting, I’m not sure any of us could completely fathom the extent of it, or the repercussions it would continue to have for years afterwards. Anyway, the point she made was that we were a lucky generation, to have witnessed events as important as that, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invasion of Kuwait, and the first Gulf war. These were historical landmarks, she told us, and we were all witnessing them with our own eyes, brought into our living rooms through our television sets.
I remember her words every once in awhile, every time I go to Delhi and lose my way, because a new flyover has come up, or a metro station, or a mall, or a road made one way. I have the usual Delhi versus Mumbai arguments with my architect friend, who insists Delhi is no better off today than it was five years ago. I go to Connaught Place and marvel at the number of options to eat and drink, and contrast it with many years ago, when as a child, it used to be a birthday treat to go to CP and have ice cream at Nirula’s. Not to mention the regular trips to Chonas in Khan Market, a short walk from school (also usually for birthday treats) which was one of the few eating places then to offer fast food, and salads and pizzas. Now Khan Market is a changed place, with the biggest brands jostling for space. A newspaper article informs me that it’s the most expensive real estate in the country at the moment, and the 16th most expensive in the world. Chonas still exists I believe, though I don’t go there any more.
I witness all these changes in my own country, my own cities, so much closer to home and heart, and I feel lucky indeed. (But then again, the human race is progressing at such a maddeningly fast pace, that that’s an honour no generation will be able to escape.)
I realize they are all a result of the changed economic policies brought about by the Congress in the 90s, and while I do appreciate them on the one hand, realizing the good that they have done the country, I cant also help but be apprehensive of getting blinded by all this prosperity, and forgetting how inequitable the rewards of this progress has been, favouring the cities, and not so much villages and small towns, and the rich and not the poor.

Lead India!

2007-10-14T19:08:00.000+05:30

There are billboards all over the city of Mumbai, and possibly the country, urging young India to choose their leaders. Called Lead India, it is a campaign by The Times of India, a leading English language publication of the country. That there should be such a campaign is not surprising, considering the upbeat mood in India, especially amongst the young in the cities and the small towns, who I imagine are the main beneficiaries of the recent and robust growth the Indian economy is witnessing. What is incredible is that the faces adorning the billboards.
I don’t read The Times of India, so I’m not actually aware of the exact nature of the campaign. I write this piece as an observer, a non reader of the Times, who nevertheless notices and reacts to the overt advertising of the campaign. And my question is, surely we can do better than to incite our young to choose Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra as their leaders? There is a certain respectability and responsibility attached to the word 'leader', which one can hardly expect filmstars to fulfill.
I can understand that filmstars all over the world are popular figures, and there exists a symbiotic relationship between them and the media. But they belong to the field of entertainment. Is it necessary to blur the boundaries so?
There was a time when the only brand one associated with filmstars was the soap, Lux. I try to delve into my earliest memories of Indian advertising, and that’s the only one in which I remember seeing filmstars. These days filmstars and cricketers endorse everything, from shaving cream to cars, cold drinks to underwear, hair oil to chyawanprash. So it is that we have an overdose of Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai, because they not only adorn the film posters plastered all over our cities, but also billboards and shop windows, and dance for us and smile at us on our television screens. Alarming as this trend is, it must work for corporate houses to sign them on for the huge amounts that they purportedly charge for endorsements.
However, having said this, and admitted to their mass appeal and ability to reach out to the Indian consumer, and maybe even the common man, I still fail to understand how they can possibly be projected as ‘leaders’? Leaders of what? Why is it that of all public figures, The Times chose to fall back on them even for a campaign like Lead India.
The saving grace is that neither is a finalist.
Though I must mention here that an actor is indeed one of the three finalists from Mumbai. The actor is Rahul Bose, and the little that I know of the man, I believe he is not entirely undeserving of the honour.

On an aside, I found this rather amusing piece on another blog. The inspiration is a passage from ‘Yes, Minister’, though neither that nor the author of the adaptation was credited, so I’m unable to provide any credits here.
INDIAN NEWSPAPERS
The Times of India is read by people who run the country (Many feel it should be rightly called Ads of India).
The Statesman is read by the people who think they run the country.
The Hindu is read by the people who think they ought to run the country.
The Indian Express is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
The Telegraph is read by people who do not know who runs the country but are sure they are doing it wrong.
Mid-Day is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
The Economic Times is read by the people who own the country.
The Tribune is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run.
The Hindustan Times is read by the people who still think it is their country.
The Asian Age is read by the people who would rather be in another country.

Memories

2007-10-13T01:35:00.000+05:30

Yesterday while driving out of Filmcity in Goregaon east, I saw a man driving a scooter with two children standing in front, and one perched on the seat at the back. This sight immediately brought back memories of my own childhood, when my father owned a scooter (I forget the name, though it was the rage then.) And I remembered all the times, all the rides I had had on it, standing in front, with the wind in my face, while my brother would sit squeezed in between father and mother. That’s how the family used to travel, like the hundreds of thousands of other families in this country.
It brought a smile to my face. A smile that stayed a long time.

The power of numbers

2007-09-27T01:47:00.000+05:30

I heard a new word last week, and subsequently read it in the paper. I’m sure it’s been around now for a while, since the phenomenon it describes certainly has, it’s just that it seems to have missed my eye till now.
It is ‘mobocracy’.
In India in recent times, it is a word well worth coining.
Here are some facts: Sometime ago a mob had attacked an art student’s exhibition in Baroda, alleging that his paintings were provocative and offensive to the Hindu religion. In Bihar over the last week, twelve people were lynched in two separate incidents, on suspicion of robbery. In Nawada district, a mob gouged out the eyes of three youths for stealing a motorcycle. In Bhagalpur, a chainsnatcher was beaten up, tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets. In Mandya in South India, eleven Dalits were injured when a mob of over 150 people from “upper caste” attacked a Dalit colony. In Firozabad, a Dalit woman, whose son was accused of eloping with a girl of another caste, was burnt to death while her family members were held hostage. All except the Baroda incident occurred in the last one month.
Whatever the provocation, religious, social or caste based, and whether spontaneous or preplanned, mobocracy is a phenomenon fast on the rise.
I am reminded of a thought that had occurred to me sometime ago. The occasion was janamashtami, better known as dahi handi in Maharashtra, named after the extremely popular game that is played in every locality in the city, and that attracts bigger sponsorships and consequently bigger amounts of prize money with every passing year. All over people were on the streets that day, dressed in their very best, laughing, chatting, dancing to music blaring from loudspeakers.
Needless to say travelling by road that day was a nightmare. And that’s what made me think, looking at all those people on the streets, so carefree, and occupying the roads with such authority, that that’s what it was about. Here’s the common man, who slogs day in and day out to earn his daily bread, and goes about his daily life resigned to fate, with little hope of a better future. He toils because he must. And he hopes that the future will be bigger and brighter for him and his close ones, that he can make it so by working harder and harder still, but realizes too that that is but a dream, atleast for the majority of the people. The overriding feeling for most of his life is one of helplessness. Certainly I have felt it a lot of times, when I have found myself unable to help, either myself or people around me.
And then there are days like janamashtami. When he can dance on the streets and he is king of the road. When he feels a certain power. What is this power? The power to obstruct normal life, even for people way more influential than himself, who he bows down to every other day of the year?
And where does he derive this power? I suppose in numbers. So is that it then? It’s the power of numbers that gives people the confidence to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. And that’s what mob psychology is about. It could be one man’s vendetta, or the frustration of many, coming to the fore every time a mob gets out of hand. But whatever the source of the unrest, numbers render people nameless and faceless, and give them the power to commit acts that they wouldn’t dare otherwise for fear of social or legal repercussions.
That’s mobocracy. The evil face of the power of numbers.

In the name of the Lord

2007-09-23T02:53:00.000+05:30

The latest controversy to have left me completely stumped and speechless is the one surrounding the remarks made by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, calling Lord Ram a ‘drunkard and a big lie’. I quote from a report in the Hindustan Times, ‘Karunanidhi insisted that he was only repeating what Valmiki had said in his Ramayan. “Valmiki has called Ram a drunkard, who regularly used to drink intoxicants” he alleged.’
Whatever his views on the Sethusamudran Shipping Canal Project, he could not possibly be helping its cause by making derogatory remarks about arguably the most important religious figure of the majority of the people of the country. Nor will its implications be lost on him. And being the seasoned politician that he is, he would decidedly have a very good reason for taking such a drastic stand.
I don’t know the first thing about the regional politics of Tamil Nadu, or the composition of Mr Karunanidhi’s vote base, but I find it difficult to imagine that any community or people would be happy with their leader launching an attack on an important religious/ mythological figure of another community. What then could be his motivation?
I can’t help but think that the most important outcome of this controversy has been the fresh lease of life that it is likely to give to the BJP. It is a ripe opportunity for the BJP to be back in the news, which they have successfully exploited, handed as it was to them on a platter by the TN CM.
For the last few days, as I expect for the next few as well, the papers have been full of related news, the latest being the call for Mr Karunanidhi's beheading by a certain Mr Vedanti, a former BJP MP and described as a senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, a status denied him by the VHP working president, who has chosen to distance his organization from Mr Vedanti by claiming that he is not a VHP member at all.
The customary responses have been made, and new ones come in with every new quote, right from his arch rival J Jayalalitha to leaders of the BJP and the Congress. BJP leaders have gone to the extent of saying that this will be one of the issues that will lead to a mid term election, as early as the first half of 2008. Other right wing Hindu organizations are making the most of the opportunity as well, with quotes flying thick and strong from all quarters.
Everything is working like clockwork. Only, to what end?

Shooting for NYATG

2007-09-16T02:20:00.000+05:30

The other day I asked X what he thought of my blog and all he could think of saying was that it was too verbose for him to read.
Fair enough.
Here’s a little story with a picture.

Some months ago, I co shot with a producer- director- cinematographer- anchor from New York, for an episode on Mumbai, for a travel show called ‘Not your average travel guide’, a Discovery Travel and Living program. His name is Joseph van Harken, and he is a partner in a production house called Showcobra in NYC.
It was a fun shoot. The crew was small, just four of us: Joseph, Deepa of Mumbai magic fame, who was our guide to the city, Kottayan, who was our ‘location’ guy i.e. he was to handle matters in case we ran into trouble with the police, or the BMC or the plethora of other organizations that one needs permissions from to be able to shoot in the streets, and yours truly.
Joe, Deepa and I got along like a house on fire, and continue to be in touch. Maybe that’s what made the shoot fun. It was like hanging out with friends. But I’ll leave that for another post. The particular incident that I thought I would write about today happened on Marine Drive.
Joe wanted to take a time lapse shot of Marine Drive, with the sun going down, and the street lights of the ‘Queen’s necklace’ coming on. He wanted, therefore, a long shot from a reasonable vantage point. Deepa pulled some strings and arranged for us to shoot from the roof of one of the residential buildings near the Nariman Point end of Marine Drive.
We went up to the roof and Joe and I started looking for our shot. Except that we couldn’t find it. Nothing seemed good enough. We needed to be further out, or a few buildings further down to get the shot we wanted. The latter was not an option, and we were on the very edge of the roof already, hugging the parapet wall. While we were trying to figure out what to do, I noticed that the window ledge was fairly wide. I pointed this out to Joe, who agreed it was worth a try. So off I went to look for a ladder. Fortunately there was some repair work going on on the floor below and I was able to procure a tall stool fairly quickly. Time was of the essence, for the light would soon start dying and that’s exactly what we were there to shoot, dying light on Marine Drive.
Joe and I lowered the stool onto the ledge which was about seven feet below the top of the parapet wall. Then Joe jumped down, followed by equipment i.e. camera, tripod and a bag with spare batteries and tapes and other such paraphernalia, and finally me. There we found the shot that we wanted.
We set up the shot, pressed record and waited.
For the next 45 minutes we were stranded on that ledge, with strong winds blowing in from the sea, and believe me, the winds seem stronger when you are five floors above ground. We had to keep a hand on the camera to keep it pressed down, so that the frame wouldn’t change.
But every minute was worth it for the sheer adventure of it, and for getting the shot.
I hope it found it’s way to the final cut.

Clock-wise with Kajal

2007-08-31T15:48:00.000+05:30

There has been some progress in the last couple of days.
I had a vague recollection of ‘flash cards’ as a teaching aid, mentioned by Dr Jalaluddin when we had worked together a long time ago. I decided to make my own version, a set of simple cards, each having either a picture of an object or it’s corresponding word. The idea is to make games around the cards. There’s not much that one can do, just simple things like matching the words to the pictures, or clubbing all pictures/ words that start with the same letter together (works better with just pictures, with words it’s obviously easier), or picking up picture cards one by one and naming the objects, and the spellings, or the same activity done with words. These might seem simple, but the child’s answers, and more importantly her mistakes, reveal her thinking process and her way of making associations.

For instance, Kajal can’t yet remember ‘cake’ and ‘clock’ too well. She remembers that one of the words has an l in it, but can’t always recall which one, especially because I never ask her in any particular order, which can sometimes give children a clue. So she tries to squeeze it in, in both, and ‘cake’ becomes ‘clake’. I can’t get her to associate sounds with letters yet. Her blank expression, and long silences have led me to conclude that perhaps it is too early for that.
But other than that the cards have been a minor success. They have generated an interest, and I hope it lasts long enough for us to reach ‘z’. Then maybe I’ll have to come up with another strategy.
Two other interesting things happened today, which I think I should mention. She knows already several parts of the body, having learnt them in school. So she can start with head, eyes, ears, and so on, all the way till toes. And she can name quite a few. So I was surprised when we picked up the word ‘eye’ and she said she didn’t know what it meant. Having learnt it as the plural ‘eyes’, she was unable to make the connection. Even after I explained to her the difference in singular and plural, taking knee as a ‘part of the body’ and cloth as a general example, it still took her awhile to figure out that what she was reading and saying were actually the same word. Well, almost. So I realize that the concept of singular and plural, which seems so easy, takes time to grasp. Not as a concept per se, because I’m sure she encounters it often enough in her everyday life. But the fact, I guess, that she has to now remember another factor about words.
The other has to do with a phenomenon that all of us have been through or even used, that is of ‘switching off’ when something is not interesting enough to hold our attention. Or when we have more pressing matters to think about, and we feel that we can temporarily suspend our thoughts, allow them to stray in another direction and return to the task at hand, without missing much in the intervening period. I realized Kajal had one such lapse when I asked her to write ‘clock’ in her notebook. It was a new word, and I felt that she needed perhaps to write it several times over to be able to remember it. So once I introduced it to her, I asked her to write it ten times. She got it right the first three times. The rest of the times, the ‘l’ was missing. Strange. She’s only copying, in a way, one row to the next, and there’s no reason to not get it right. The word, correctly spelt is written in the rows above. And yet, the fourth time onwards, she writes ‘cock’ all the way down. When she finished, I asked her the spelling, and guess what? She got it right.
Its not that she was not writing it correctly, it was that she didn’t even realize that she wasn’t. A task so boring, that she began to do it mechanically, making a mistake in the bargain, and yet managing to achieve the desired result.

More on Kajal

2007-08-27T00:27:00.000+05:30

There’s something that I’m not doing right. I’m not able to get Kajal to really respond and remember things very well. Am I making the same mistake that I have often criticized? Am I ‘expecting’ too much? Should I be expecting at all…
I see her making mistakes and I try to understand the nature of her mistakes, so I can understand how she is thinking. That might give me clue as to how to teach her better… but maybe that’s the mistake I’m making in the first place? Trying to ‘teach’ her…
Reminds me of something I read in a John Holt book,
‘If we taught children to speak, they’d never learn.’ William Hull
Anyway I’m still struggling with getting her to remember basic words, their spellings and meanings. Lost in a maze of apples, ants, axes, bats, boxes, boys, cats, cakes, caps…

Type the rest of your post here.

Frozen

2007-08-26T00:20:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago I had the good fortune to be invited to the screening of one of the best Indian films I have seen in recent times. Certainly its one of a kind in terms of its look and treatment. Its called ‘Frozen’ (http://www.frozen.co.in), directed by Shivajee Chandrabhushan and shot by Shanker Raman (check link for all credits.)
It’s a simple tale, of simple folk, a small, impoverished family and their struggles, both individual/ personal and together as a family against Nature and man. Nature, in the inevitable changes and difficulties that accompany advancing age and the hardships brought about by the difficult terrain they live in, and man in the exploitative practices of the more prosperous, that is the convention in societies the world over, and the changes wrought by the army setting up a camp in the area.
The beauty of the film lies in its telling.

We see their world through the eyes of little Chomo, as he takes us, layer by layer, into his world of an old struggling father, struggling against hope and reason, and a charismatic, wild, rebellious sister whose acute sense of loss leads her to question and defy everything in her path.
The imagery is beautiful and haunting. The film is black and white, shorn of colour apparently to emphasise the drudgery of their lives, and to not let the beauty of the landscape overshadow the filmmakers’ intention of illustrating the difficulty of living there.
The shooting style is particularly impressive. Camera moves are inspired and at places, lyrical. I remember a sequence in particular shot in a forest, with the trees deeply out of focus and the camera tracking sideways until it comes to a tree in the foreground in sharp focus, whence the focus shifts to the background to reveal the character. This is followed by a shot of a camera tracking backwards and looking upwards, at a snatch of sky through the tops of trees, and Chomo comes into view, walking along with the camera as the voice over begins.
Chomo narrates parts of the story, but there are long chunks in between where the viewer is left to herself, an objective bystander watching events unfold, until he decides to reappear and clear the haze, and tie the threads together. These chunks are beautiful in several ways: in their simplicity, the depiction of life in that region, and the part that they play in taking us closer to the characters. They are beautiful technically, the choice and design of shots, of camera movements, of slowing down key moments, all of which conspire to take the viewer into a mysterious, unknown space, what I like to call the mindspace of the character, even if its only briefly. And they are more esoteric, they left me wondering if I quite got everything...
All in all, it is a film well made. Kudos to everyone involved with the project, some of who I am happy to state, are dear friends. I hope they continue to work in the same spirit and produce works of the same quality and conviction.

Wanted: Tulsi or Parvati

2007-08-22T20:37:00.000+05:30

I read an article in the newspaper today that reported a most bizarre trend. It seems more and more men these days are advertising on matrimonial sites such as shaadi.com, for women who would have the attributes of ‘Tulsi’ from ‘Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi’ or ‘Parvati’ from ‘Kahani ghar ghar ki’!
Its incredible, beyond both belief and comprehension, that such thing should be happening. Though I suspect I have only myself to blame for being so shocked. This was bound to happen sooner or later. We have all seen how popular these serials have become over the last few years. And how they continue to retain their popularity in spite of having way outlived their original plot lines, and jumped several generations.

Smriti Irani’s easy foray into politics and the way people continue to identify her with her on screen avatar, was already an indication of how these worlds of make believe had entered our lives in a direct way. And it was only a matter of time, before the common man would want to embrace these notions created by the television. Men desiring these seemingly perfect demi goddesses such as Parvatis and Tulsis all for themselves, was I guess, inevitable. After all haven’t people always fantasized about filmstars?
What is it that makes them so very popular, I wonder. You see, we have always had a very rich filmmaking tradition. In terms of sheer volume, as measured in the number of films made in a year, Bollywood is the largest filmmaking industry in the world. Of course our budgets being what they are, it still doesn’t come close to Hollywood in size or income generated.
People in this country obviously value entertainment, and don’t mind paying for it. I guess it is only to be expected. At the end of a long, hard day (and I am somehow inclined to believe that a long, hard day in the life of an Indian would be a lot more taxing than that in the life of someone from a more developed country) the common man would be looking for some entertainment. So we have had a long tradition of films which would invariably have two parallel tracks, the main storyline, and a parallel loveline. No matter how strong a theme the film has, it has to have a love angle, and a few songs to showcase it, for it to succeed. Of course there has been a whole parallel movement of serious, thoughtful cinema, as also crossover cinema, in recent times, that manages to stay true to its core theme while still making some amount of profit, bridging the gap between the so called ‘art’ and ‘commercial’ films. But that is not the subject under discussion here, so I’ll refrain from going deeper. Maybe another day, another post.
The funny thing that I notice though is that as films get raunchier and more explicit, in their depiction of women, sex and violence, television on the other hand is going the other way. More and more we see women sexier and with better toned bodies, sporting shorter skirts and lower necklines, on the big screen, while the small screen in inundated with the stereotypical ‘bhartiya nari’, complete with the nine yard sari (or in other cases, salwar kameez), sindoor, mangalsutra and an undying love and devotion to the husband and family.
It’s the same country, isn’t it? And the same people? Oh sure the target audiences might be different. But surely they can’t be that different?
Further what I find rather hard to believe is how Indian audiences, especially women, are gobbling up all the scheming and politics within the family that seems to be the plotline for most of the serials on television. What is it that’s making these rather regressive serials work? Is it aspirational value? For they all them seem to living in palatial homes and doing businesses with mutlicrore turnovers. The women invariably wear designer sarees, are loaded with jewellery and always, but always, look like a million bucks even if they’ve just woken up from sleep. Is it a reflection of people’s aspirations, of what they would rather have in their own lives, that they watch and relish this entirely unbelievable rubbish?
Or is it truly a reflection of our society? Are our families, especially joint families, actually this ridden with jealousy and politics? And all the plot lines actually drawn from reality and spruced up with a good looking facade to make it sell better?
Or maybe it’s a both and more, a complex combination of many factors that ultimately works. Maybe I should contact Ekta Kapoor for answers to some of these questions. I have a feeling she has it all figured!

saddi Dilli, amchi Mumbai

2007-08-14T20:14:00.000+05:30

I have often found myself at the centre of a Delhi versus Mumbai argument, given that I was born and brought up in the former, and have now made the latter my home. Let me state at the outset that I love both. Both cities have their strengths and weaknesses, and it’s unfair to compare two entities so different in nature.

Delhi has been synonymous with home forever. We shifted to Delhi in 1982, if memory serves me correctly, and my family still stays there. I have seen the city grow exponentially, both vertically and horizontally, with buildings in the city growing taller by the day, and boundaries of the city expanding with every new master plan. Delhi is no longer a city but a recognized State, with its own legislature and government. And there is an entity called the National Capital Region (NCR), which includes the neighboring satellite towns of Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana, and NOIDA and Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh.
Mumbai, growing equally exponentially (I’m sure there’s data to say which is growing faster, but that isn’t of as much concern to me) seems on the other hand, to be favouring the vertical route. With land in short supply, and the disadvantage of being a coastal city, so that it cannot possibly expand much in the direction of the sea (although God knows they keep trying by reclaiming more and more land,) it has turned to the sky to accommodate it’s ever increasing population, and its growing demands. It is the capital of Maharashtra and the seat of its State government.
But these things don’t interest me. I am more of a people person. And therefore to me, the most defining characteristic of any city is its people and their environment. And the people of Delhi are a mixed lot. It’s truly a cosmopolitan city and that reflects in its demography. So even though the majority of the people are North Indian, one finds in this city people from all parts of the country, speaking their different languages and bringing with them their unique cultures.
A large proportion of the original inhabitants of Mumbai were and continue to be, Marathi and Gujarati speaking i.e. belonging to the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. And much like Delhi, many peoples from many parts of the country have settled here.
In spite of this similarity, I find the people of Mumbai a lot friendlier and warm hearted than Delhi. The common man on the street is a lot more pleasant and approachable, as also honest and helpful. The women though are something else altogether. The women of both cities are mostly similar in characteristics, as can be expected, but somehow Mumbai women are a lot more aggressive.
The two cities work at different paces. Mumbai makes Delhi seem laid back in comparison. Neither seems to sleep, whatever the hour of the day, but Mumbai scores over Delhi as regards nightlife. Most significantly, at least for me, Mumbai offers to its women, the chance to have a nightlife even unescorted.
Also the women in Mumbai are able to exercise a lot more freedom in the way they dress. There is no denying how utterly and shamelessly lecherous the Delhi man can be. This leaves one with no choice but to dress relatively more conservatively so as not to attract too much attention. I talk here of course, of the very middle class women, such as myself, who often use public transport to do their traveling.
Strangely enough, public transport in Delhi, where it is possibly most essential, is not divided along gender lines. The backbone of Delhi are its buses, and now along some routes, the Metro, but neither has separate compartments or areas marked for women, as say is the case in the trains in Mumbai or the buses in Bangalore. Mumbai trains have separate bogies for women though its buses are more unisex. The buses in Bangalore have a system wherein women use the front part of the bus, using the single door in front for both entry and exit, while the men use the back part.
These divisions ensure that during peak rush hour, all the jostling is happening amongst women and men separately. This, though I found very strange and surprising at first, especially when traveling with friends in Mumbai when we would separate out at the originating station and reconverge at the destination station, has grown on me with time. Anybody who has faced the squeezing and pinching on crowded DTC buses, followed by the inevitable altercations and much swearing, would prefer the separation, gender equality be damned.
These are some observations based on dealing with the people of the two cities. I find the visible character, notably in terms of its architecture and street culture, also very distinct and different. I’ll save that for another post.

Kajal, my eight year old student

2007-08-06T02:55:00.000+05:30

Sometime ago I started something that I am now reconsidering the sanity of having got myself into. My maid Saroj, who I have already written about, has this adorable 8 year old daughter. A few weeks ago, in another one of our many conversations, it emerged that this little girl had failed in the 4th standard and was now repeating a year. I should not have been surprised, I’ve worked in education before and am well aware of the state of the public education system, and consequently of the students who are its inevitable sufferers.

I decided to look into the matter, and asked her to get her daughter, Kajal’s Maths and General science books the next day. Though why, and what I could possibly hope to achieve by it was still a mystery, even to me. To my dismay (and some weeks later, with the changed viewpoint, my utter relief!) I realized that her books were all in Marathi. But of course, the government schools in Mumbai are all Marathi medium, which is as it should be. So what do I do? Undeterred, I asked Saroj to get her English books and send Kajal for tuitions everyday, or atleast on days when I’m home in the evenings. That, I realize increasingly, is not very often. And every time it isn’t I am left with a sense of guilt for having failed the child. But I jump the gun…
So start my English classes with little Miss Kajal. She is sincere enough but woefully lacking in any skills beyond half-baked knowledge of letters of the alphabet and a few rhymes blindly memorized. It is going to be an uphill task.
As I try to go on, I realize I could write endlessly about my experiences of the last few weeks. Maybe over a few posts…
Spending time with Kajal and helping her learn has mostly been a pleasant experience. She is eager and that’s half the battle won. But there are a few things about her that are peculiar. She won’t for instance say if she doesn’t know an answer. She will instead, sit there with her eyes lowered, and keep trying to work it out. Except that there isn’t so much working out in a letter, is there? And if you haven’t learnt it before, you cant be expected to know it. But she hasn’t been taught to say ‘I don’t know’ without a sense of I assume, guilt or inability.
Sadly still, she hasn’t been taught to speak, to speak her thoughts, to try to find answers, without fear of making mistakes. That has been another challenge, to get her to speak, even if it is only to say that she doesn’t know an answer. Or to try to figure out an answer even if she makes a mistake. Or to explain how she tried to figure it out.
Today was a minor success. After repeatedly getting ‘b-o-x’ in reply to a question about the spelling of ‘boy’, I finally realized why she was making the mistake. She was trying to recall the letters as they appeared on the page on which she wrote them. Except that I changed the order of the words when I quizzed her. And that confused her. Not yet having made the connection between the spelling and the sound, she was trying to fit in one of the two options that she thought might be right from what she remembered written on that page in her notebook.
Now I am trying to get her to make the connections between the letters and their sounds. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe its too early, I’m not sure. But I’m trying.